University of Virginia Library

II. VOLUME II.

BOOK THE FOURTH. A LATTER-DAY EDEN.

Canto the First. Flight of the Lovers.

I.

II.

Prosaic details, truly! Lady mine—
Who hold ethereal Love a power divine;
O let it not your fervid faith displease,
Romance so realistic stoops to these!
Love is the prime of Gods—O clearly!
A Thaumaturge and Master-mage is he;
Let all confess him as puissant—nearly—
As he conceits himself to be!
Yes! yes! we know, and none deny,
All risks, all ventures He will try,
All checks and chances dare—defy!
To his great heart and hope elate
What are the threats of adverse Fate!
How fade the frowns of Circumstance
Before his forward-leaping glance!
His course that ever forth and far
Seems trained by some triumphant Star
Shall rivers bound, shall mountains bar?—
One look, and lo! from mouth to fountain
Uprising from its gravelly bed,
Each river, shrunk to a silver thread
Floats gossamer-like across the lea;
One waive or nod of hand or head,
And every forest-puckered mountain
Rocked from its base uneasily
Goes crab-like lumbering to the Sea!—
Shall not the Ocean heave up pearls
To deck one Beauty's golden curls?
Shall not the Stars come trickling down
If one dear brow demand a crown?—
Yes, fair ones! so shall you decree,
And youthful hearts shall all agree
In Love's divine supremacy!
Though duller Deities the while
May at his proud pretensions smile?
Bid Cold and gaunt-eyed Hunger clip
The splendour of his purple wings;
And from his graceful shoulders strip
The golden bow, the ivory quiver,
Unless across them too he flings
The wallet vile and vulgar scrip,
Replete with gross substantial things;
Nay, make the beauteous stripling shiver
Unless to some frieze cloak he clings;
Nor, jealous, let the bright Joy-Giver
From Psyche's mouth the honey sip,
And purse and press her sweet lips out
To semblance of a tempting pout,
Or round them bud-like for the bliss
Of a playful passionate kiss,
Till with his own he first have blown
Each rosy frozen finger-tip.
Ah sad! this glowing glorious God to see,
And think what paltry hests and heeds may be
Importunate, imperative as he!

III.

So to the forests on Taupiri's face
O'er the low cliffs at first the three retreat
There they can find a handy hiding-place,
And Amohia rest through noonday heat.
At nightfall they retrace their steps at first
Uncertain—guided by immediate need
Of shelter—and resolve their course to shape
By Amo's counsel for the land that nursed
Her mother, whose great brother ruled indeed
O'er all the tribes about the earliest Cape
The Sun salutes when his resplendent hair
Shakes off the foam-flakes of his Ocean lair.
There she was well-beloved; and both might there,
She for her mother's, he for her sake, share
The nigh-related Chief's protecting care,
Secure alike from rescue and pursuit
With one so potent of such good repute.
So North of Roto-iti, East away,
And for the seaside by the Bounteous Bay,
Though from the route direct still given to stray,
They travel; resting in the woods by day
When needful, and by villages at night
Passing with cautious speed; and none the less
On Ranolf's part, with undisguised delight
At all the shifts, suspenses, and success
And stealthy freedom of their dexterous flight.

IV.

V.

VI.

Or else on sands that, white and loose, give way
At every step, they toil; till labour-sped
Their limbs in the noon-loneliness they lay
On that hot, soft, yet unelastic bed,
With brittle seaweed, pink and black o'erstrown,
And wrecks of many a forest-growth upthrown,
Bare stem and barkless branches, clean, sea-bleached,
Milk-white,—or stringy logs deep-red as wine,
Their ends ground smooth against a thousand rocks,
Dead-heavy, soaked with penetrating brine;
Or bolted fragment of some Ship storm-breached
And shattered—all with barnacles o'ergrown,
Grey-crusted thick with hollow-coned small shells—
So silent in the sunshine still and lone,
So reticent of what it sadly tells;
Which Ranolf then imagines till he shocks
Quick-sympathizing Amo with a tale
Of brave men lost, and haply lovers gone
For ever—never heard of nor forgot;
And so beguiles the bright one of her tears,
Which, while he kisses the wet cheek so pale
He charms away, and the sweet mourner cheers,
Hinting the contrast of their happier lot:
Then turns to livelier sights the scene supplied;
And near some river-mouth—shoal—marshy-wide—
Would mark the swarming sea-birds o'er the waste
Tremble across the air in glimmering flocks;
Or how, long-legged with little steps they plied
Their yellow webs, in such high-shouldered haste
Pattering along the cockle-filled sandbanks,
Some refuse dainty of the Sea to taste;
Or standing stupified in huddled ranks
Still rounded up by the advancing tide—
White glittering squadrons on the level mud
Dressing their lines before the enclosing flood;
Or what strange instinct guided them so well,
Posed by their mollusk, up in air to start,
And soaring, on the rocks let fall the shell
Whose stubborn valves they could not force apart.

VII.

VIII.

Now, through some dim white days of ceaseless rain,
They waited till the sky should clear again,
Roofed by a hut no woodman would demur
To call a palace for a forester.
Amid the trees—where loftiest towering grew
Some spiny-leaved totáras like the yew,
Root-buttressed, forty yards or so in height,—
They—ere the mist first gathering blanched the blue
Though many a sign that threatened rain they knew—
Had built a hasty homestead snug and tight.
Some of these trees, notch-circled near the ground,
That for such end their bark might well be dried,
Or trunks be seasoned for canoes, they found;
Their stringy coats were easily off-stripped,
In stripes, long, broad and heavy, upward ripped;
These, fastened on a frame of poles flax-tied,
Slant roof and walls against the windward side—
Made such a pleasant dwelling in six hours
As had withstood a month of drenching showers;
Thick fern and broom were fragrant floor and couch;
And to the sweetclean roof and walls upslung,
Guns, shot-belt, matches, flints and powder-pouch
And change of raiment, dry and safely hung.

IX.

X.

And then within their wildwood home, what cheer—
What manifold amusements might be found!
What pleasure in the necessary round
Of primitive provisions for so rude
A life—whose mere privations still endued
The hours that flew so fast with fleeter wings;
The merry makeshifts, and the thousand things
To tax contrivance, whence ingenious tact
A double comfort from discomfort wrings:
Scant implements still put to novel use;
Forced partnership in many a little act
For which e'en Love had else scarce found excuse.
Then Ranolf had in note-book to record
Brief hints of many an incident or word
That might the vivid memory reproduce
Of these bright scenes far hence when they should be
Forgotten into freshness. Or he made
Upon the inside smoothness of a square
Of that stripped bark, with pistol-barrel ruled,
Draft-chequers,—clipping flat for draughtsmen rare
Hard violet drupes of the great laurel-tree
And gold karaka-dates—and soon had schooled
His quick companion in the game they played
For kisses like Campaspe! though, he said,
Amo from Cupid had not cared to win
Cheek-bloom—lips bow-curved—tender turn of chin—
Hers sweeter far already! Or he strove
With taste, and skill—but not in like degree—
Still quickened, still impeded by his love—
Sketch-book on knee, to reproduce, though slight,
Some glimpses of the spirit-winning light
That danced in dazzling depths of Amo's eyes—
Some of her shape's enchanting symmetries;
While she, with wondering bright compliance bore
The frequent interruptions and delay
To the immediate work she had in hand,
As he so oft entreated her to stay
In that position just one moment more—
Just to continue so to kneel or stand—
Reach up—bend over—let him seize the charm
Of some fine posture, planted foot, or arm
Upraised, that any Sculptor's heart might warm.

XI.

XII.

But could wise Nature's so conspicuous Art,—
Lavish of might divinest to unfold
The gleam and glory of mere human limbs
Which all beside of form and hue bedims,—
If ever, fail with this susceptive heart
And fiery Sense, in her design to raise
That fervid admiration, uncontrolled
And uncontrollable, she must intend
Should ne'er be foiled for fairest moral end?—
No! well might that pure form, as he surveys
Its rich proportions cast in such a mould—
The perfect mould of Beauty, that combines
Rare lightness with luxuriance, and displays
What subtle joy can lurk in sinuous lines
That in their delicate winding wavure seem
Self-singing of their fine felicities
Like musical meanderings of a stream;
Well might its melodies of movement thrill
His soul with rapture—dash his baffled skill
With blank despair, as lovingly he tries
To fix the fluent loveliness—portray
Some one perfection from the plastic play
Of flitting statue-pictures that displace
Each other, and successive charms efface
In ever new varieties of grace!

Canto the Second. Miroa's Story.

I.

So in the glen three days had well-nigh passed;
The pelting rain seemed holding up at last.
Ranolf and Amo in their bark-built tent
Were busy; she, in sylvan arts adept,
With scraps of fern drybrown from where they slept,
And moss from underneath thick boughs, in spite
Of damp, preparing her quick fire to light:
But with grave brow half-puzzled how to glean
A savoury meal from viands well-nigh spent:
And he, in prospect of the brightening weather,
Intent, but leisurely, with loitering mien,
On ferreting with purple-glossed green feather—
The wild-duck's, moistened with its searching oil—
Into the fastenings of his rifle's lock,
The shining intricacies rust would spoil;
Still pausing in his task, with banter fond
Her over-anxious care for him to mock,
To which, no whit disturbed, she would respond
Her fixed conviction what to him was due:
Or, if a longer silence intervened
Wondering what strange wild tameness towards him drew
The large grey-coated robin—kinsman true
Of England's delicate highbred bird of home,—
So fine-limbed, full of spirit!—how 'twould come
After a little startled flight or two
And perch upon the very gun he cleaned.—
'Twas then, Te Manu—who, sent off to scout,
A cloak of perfect thatch about him thrown,
Had fetched a wary compass wide about
To a far village off their route—prepared
With preconcerted tale—was seen alone
Returning from the journey safely dared,
O'er the dim plain—a shadow: till as near
He drew, the triumph on his face was clear.
Laden he came—though nought for loads he cared
When self-imposed by fancy for good cheer;
Cray-fish; plump pigeons in their fat preserved,
Neat-packed in pottles of dark wood, adorned
With carvings arabesque so quaintly curved;
Store of that tiny fish like whitebait, dried
In sunshine on hot stones; with scraps beside
Of native dainties nowise to be scorned.

II.

And when his shoulders from the pack were freed,
With joyous face he told them news indeed:
How he had met a traveller newly come
From Rotorua, and from him had learnt the sum
Of all that there had happened; how at first
When missing Amohia's clothes were found
Upon the shore, all had believed her drowned:
Then what a wailing had ensued—a burst
Of genuine grief—no counterfeiting show;
What gashing of the breast with shells, and flow
Of blood had marked the matrons' gory woe;
How Tangimoana had torn his hair
And curst his gods in frenzy of despair,
And raved against the Priest whose scheming greed
His own too ready confidence had wronged,
And driven his darling to the desperate deed;
(From Miroa was that certain fact derived);
Then what a coolness rose between the two.
And how when Ranolf's absence so prolonged,
Begun that very day, had roused more true
Suspicions, fresh inquiry set on foot
Led to the knowledge that the pair had been
By accident upon their journey seen.
And then the Priest so hotly urged pursuit
His obvious spite provoked a new dispute;
For Tangi's heart such great revulsion swelled
Of rapture that his dearest Child survived,
It found no room for thoughts of hate and rage,
And all the vengeful Priest's advice repelled
Almost with scorn; whereat the other turned
Livid with sulky wrath that inly burned,
And no amends of Tangi's could assuage;
At which all wondered; (here in Amo's breast
An undivulged remembrance more than guessed
The jealous fury that his heart possessed:)
And how the Priest soon from the Island went,
None knew when, whither, or with what intent—
Went mutely maddening with his fancied wrong
Though muttering vengeance and return erelong;
At which in hardy confidence so strong
Stout Tangi only laughed; and longed to see
His hoary age's pride again, and press
Her brow against his own in fond caress;
Yearned for her home—companioned should she be
By husband, fair or tawny—what cared he!—

III.

“But what of Miroa?” Amo asked—“her friend?”—
Ah! there too he had tidings somewhat strange,
He answered, with a shrewd and prying glance
Eyeing the beauteous questioner askance:
“O'er Miroa there had come a curious change
Since Amo left, which none could comprehend
At first; for she—that merry maid—had grown
Sad, absent, sullen-seeming; given up all
Her favourite haunts and friends to muse alone;
Thrown all the sports and frolic games aside
Of which she was the leader, life, and pride;
The lively matches with the dangling ball
Struck at each other by the seated band;
The hunted pebble passed from hand to hand;
‘Káhu’ the ‘hawk’ of rushes she could weave
And coax with scarce-seen string to soar so high
That all the children said it must deceive
The living hawks they saw beside it fly;
The háka-dances where she shone supreme,
For gayer postures who could shape or dream?
With half her archness give each new grimace
Or shake the quivering hands with saucier grace?
The skipping-rope she never had to hold,
For who could ever trip her nimble feet?
Maui, the string she could dispart and fold
With dextrous fingers into forms complete
Of all things 'twas your fancy to behold—
Canoes, men, houses, wonders new and old—
Great Mother Night producing all her train
Of Gods—or cutting with swift snap in twain
Even Maui's self—inventor of the game,
For daring to invade that darksome dame:
All these poor Miroa had discarded now
And moped and slunk about with moody brow.

IV.

V.

But Amo recognized the words at once,
And knew the song of course; and at request
Of Ranolf, with an accent that expressed
Compassion mixed with somewhat of disdain,
Recited in sweet tones the childish strain,
Whose meaning this loose version may explain:

VI.

VII.

Well, so they grieved for Miroa: yet no less
Perhaps, and shall we blame her if 'twere so?
This very feeling for poor Miroa's woe,
Though Amo's love for her was true indeed,
In her unconscious heart could not but breed
A secret feeling she would not confess
Of greater joy in her own happiness.
And cheering up, she said—“You may depend
On this—from what Te Manu says, our friend
Has overcome and shaken off her pain;
That song would tell it—but still more the power
To burn the keepsake—what was it? the flower
Or ribbon you bestowed in luckless hour.
And she has lovers, O in plenty—she!
And there was one on whom she always smiled,
I thought; a lad who lives or I mistake,
A fine good lad, beside that very Lake
And near the friends shemust have gone to see;
She will be happy soon—dear merry Child!
Though how she could get o'er such love”—the rest
Was hidden with her face on Ranolf's breast.

VIII.

Then, as they marked the sky still growing bright
The distant mountains visible once more,
Black-blue, with smothering fleeces flattened o'er
Their ridges—sprawling harpies snowy white
With claws that clutched their summits hid from sight
Or like a sudden foam-sea, o'er each brow
Arrested in its branching overflow;
The pair made ready for a happier start,
Free to obey each prompting of the heart,
Go where they list—all apprehension flown—
And give themselves to Love and Joy alone.

Canto the Third. Love and Nature luxuriant.

I.

A king—a God—a little Child
Your happy Lover is; a Saint
With all the Eternal Powers at one—
Serene—confiding—reconciled:
He thinks no ill—believes in none;
There is for him no sin, no taint,
No room for doubt, disgust, complaint,
Misgiving or despondence faint:
Life's mystery flies, her secret won,
Like morning frost before the sun;
How should its cobweb ties arrest
The triumph of his bounding breast!
How should he feel, with actual heaven
In measureless fruition given,
The mounting spirit's mortal load?
Feel, steeped in empyrean day
And rapture without stint bestowed,
The Mind too big for its abode,
The Soul's discomfort in its clay?
Why look to some seraphic sphere
For light, for love, so lavish here?
In this our gorgeous Paradise
Why bend to grief—why stoop to vice?
Ah why distrest and sorrow-prest—
Why not be right and brave and blest?
How easy, in a world so bright
To be, to live, blest, brave and right!—
He breathes Elysium—walks on wings;
His own unbounded bliss he flings
O'er all deformed, unhappy things:
Transfigured are they—glorified;
Or vanish and cannot abide
The flood of splendour, the full tide
Of joy that from his heart so wide
Wells over all the world beside.
O Melodist unequalled—Pride
Of Nature's self-taught songsters he!
Inspired—unconscious—mute too soon—
Who sets and sings his lyric Life-song free
To glad Creation's high triumphant tune!

II.

So for herself and most for her beloved
All anxious cares and fears removed,
So upon Amohia now unclouded beams—
In rounded fulness of possession streams
Once more the dream of dreams—
The dear divine delirium! say
Once to all by fate allowed;
Though from its shy crescent small,
That finest silver eyelash, fall
Only its earliest rising ray;
Clothing them ever with a luminous cloud
Wherein they may a sweet while stray,
In the thronging whisper-play
Of Angel-wings, on life's highway;
Monomaniacs, in the charge
Of Beauty,—blissfully at large
'Mid the sadly saner crowd.

III.

—But we pause—we pale before it,
Fairest reader—that soft splendour!
And your pardon we implore it,
If in sight of scene so tender
Heart and voice we haply harden,
And with faltering step pass o'er it,
That sequestered Eden-garden;
Painting in evasive fashion
Two young lovers, wildly loving,
Through a lovely region roving,
Free as Nature—free as birds are,
Free as infants' thoughts and words are!
Ah! too rich for our rude treating,
Too exalted for our story
That intense absorbing passion—
That fine fever of young Love;
Which though cheating, swiftly fleeting,
Oft it seem to mock and flout us,
Comes so innocent, undesigning,
Comes into our darkness shining,
Comes and wraps the mystic glory
Of the golden Heavens about us!
And though pining or declining,
Buried—pent here—without vent here—
Lone—a stranger, wild, erratic;
Soon returning to the burning
Blisses of its home above—
Leaves a bud elsewhere to blossom,
Leaves a light in every bosom;—
Just revealing ere off-stealing,
One brief glimpse of soul-enjoyment,
To endure a memory sure—
Pure—a secret life-refiner
And great lure to realms diviner,
Where abandonment ecstatic
To the infinite of feeling—
Loftier love than aught existent,
Ever by indulgence growing
Deeper, fonder, and more glowing—
Tide at flooding still new flowing,
Flower fresh-budding while full-blowing—
Is consistent—is persistent,
Is our normal, true employment!

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

“But O their rich luxuriance! What a load
That sturdy giant lifts in air!
His mighty arms are strong and broad,
But all with alien growths are furred,
A shaggy hide of creepers rare;
Their forks are all blocked up and blurred
With tufts of clogging parasites
That crowd till not a spot left bare
Might offer footing for a bird!—
And such her boundless vigour, see,
Above, below, and everywhere,
Exulting Nature so delights,
So riots in profusion, she
Twice over does her work for glee!
A tangled intricacy first she weaves,
Under and upper growth of bush and tree
In rampant wrestle for ascendancy;
Then round it all a richer overflow
Of reckless vegetation flings,
That here, close-moulding on the shrubs below
A matted coat of delicate leaves,
Mantles the muffled life whereon it clings
Into a solid mass of greenery;
There, mounting to the tree-tops, down again
Comes wildly wantoning in a perfect rain
Of trailers—self-encircling living strings
Unravellable! see how all about
The hundred-stranded creeper-cordage swings!
And when the breeze, so loud without,
Now tamed and awe-struck, gliding in, has found
Amid the stately trees a stealthy way—
How gently to-and-fro just o'er the ground
The low-depending woody ringlets sway,
Like panting creatures on the watch for play!”

Canto the Fourth. Trees and the Tree-God.

I.

(Then to himself, more musingly:)

II.

III.

Thus they two in their dream. But Evening now
Steals, like a serious thought o'er joyous face,
Its cooling veil o'er the warm Earth to throw.
The hawk no longer soars in pride of place,
Stiff-wheeling with bent head in circles slow;
The teal and wild-duck leave the floating weed
And open pool, for sheltering rush and reed;
And home with outstretched necks the cormorants fly
In strings—each train dark-lettering the sky,
Now V exact, now lengthening into Y—
As arrow-like direct their course they steer
To haunts afar, unseen, but somewhere near
Those mountain-summits carpeted and black
With forests dense without a break or track,
Whence smooth and ferny spurs in golden dun
Of solemn sunlight undulating run
Down to dim bases lost in shadows blue
That blot the intervening gullies too—
Encroaching darkness creeping upward still
O'er chequered black-and-gold of dell and hill.

IV.

“How pleasant is the life those birds must lead—
About the sea all day to sport and feed,
Where'er they will, with little heed;
And flee away at night with aim so sure
Striking across the sky, so eager each
His inaccessible far roost to reach—
So secret, solitary and secure
In solitude. And is not ours like theirs—
As free, as lonely sweet, as void of cares!”
Said Ranolf, as beside him closer drew
Fair Amo: “Yes, my wildwood dove,
What have we else to do but live and love!”
And she, her native tongue, no doubt, too weak,
The fond delight that filled her heart to speak,
Replied in one more rich, she felt, though new,
That foreign language of a fervid kiss;
Shaping her smiling lips as if they might
Unlearnedly perform the mystic rite,
Some feature of its due observance miss.
“But see,” she hints, “Te Manu comes to say
The kúkupas are done he takes such pride
In cooking.”—As she spoke the youngster gay
Came running up and grinning cried:
Ranoro, come! come, Amo, quickly—do!
Ka rá-we! 'tis a glorious stew!”

Canto the Fifth. The Fountain-Terraces.

I.

II.

III.

But see! in all that lively spread
Of blue and white and vermeil red,—
How, dark with growths of greenest gloss
Just at the edge of that first ledge,
(Calcareous string to cliff-formed bow
O'er which the hot-pool trickles slow)
A little rocky islet peeps
Into the crater-caldron's deeps.
Along the ledge they lightly cross,
And from its midway islet gaze
O'er all the scene—and every phase
The current takes as down it strays.
They note where'er, by step or stair,
By brimming bath, on hollow reef
Or hoary plain, its magic rain
Can reach a branch, a flower, a leaf—
The branching spray, leaf, blossom gay,
Are blanched and stiffened into stone!
So round about lurks tracery strewn
Of daintiest-moulded porcelain-ware,
Or coral wreaths and clusters rare,
A white flint-foliage!—rather say
Such fairy work as frost alone
Were equal to, could it o'erlay
With tender crust of crystals fair,—
Fine spikes so delicately piled—
Not wintry trees, leafstripped and bare,
But summer's vegetation, rich and wild.

IV.

V.

Content that night no more to see,
The wanderers push off merrily
To what that night their home shall be:
A little rugged isle (another
Beside it standing, its twin-brother
In conformation strange) that lifts
Its verdurous tufts o'er tortuous rifts
Misshapen—many a dip and rent
In rock that—ever bathed, besprent
With oozy hotspring, fervid play
Of steam that finds a viewless vent—
Is softening slow to pallid clay.
By isles—mere knots of waving grass,
By thin-spread rush and reed they pass;
And fright a thousand birds that rise
From bubbling channel, heated marsh;
And flee in flocks away, with cries
Now plaintive—wild, now hoarse and harsh;
Coot, teal and that rich gallinule
Of velvet violet plumage proud;
That, night and day, each open pool
Or warm and watery covert crowd;
And stalk and strut and peer and pry
With jerking tail and searching eye;
Or plash and paddle, duck and dive,
And through green bills quick-gargling drive
The scooped-up Lake's clear lymph. And see,
Pink-legged, snow-white or sable-pied,
Those strangers from far Ocean's side;
Bluff oyster-catcher, avocet,
And tripping beach-birds, seldom met
Elsewhere—come hither, not for food,
But on this warm delight to brood,
This tepid inland luxury.

VI.

The pair have left the light canoe
And cross the soil with cautious tread,
Whose treacherous crust they scarce can trust—
Each step, it seems, may break it through.
With springy swelling moss 'tis spread,
An emerald, warm, and soaking sod,
In places; then their way they track
Through little thickets, very black
In shade against the tumbled blocks,
The steaming, white and moonlit rocks;
But cherished there to richness rare
Of fragrant broom and ferny plume
And winding woven lycopod
Close-creeping—all luxuriant, lush,
In that pervading vapour-gush.
Then on a grassy spot the brake
Left free—just large enough to make
A couch for two, fenced all around
With aromatic leptosperm—
A soft green gapless wall—they heap
Elastic fern and broom to keep
Down to a pleasant warmth the heat
The ground gives out; where they may sleep—
Could Love desire a bower more sweet?—
Secure no noxious reptiles creep
Throughout the land—envenomed worm
Or poison-snake you dread to meet:
And lulled by that low changeless churme,
The hissing, simmering, seething sound
That sings and murmurs all the while
And ever round that mystic isle;
May sleep a blissful sleep profound,
Plunged in the calm unconscious heaven
To youth and health out-wearied given.

Canto the Sixth. A Geyser Yoked.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

Canto the Seventh. English Maidens.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

The sunny look at once returned,
And through the clear warm brown discerned,
The blush of artless triumph burned.
Then round his neck her arms she threw
And gazed, with love how fond and true
As upon something to adore,
Upon the face above her; in that vein
When parted lips and anxious sigh confess
Content is at its highest, and the excess
Of pleasure trembles on the brink of pain;
With simplest admiration too
Reading his features o'er and o'er,
As if her eyes could never feed
Enough, nor sate her heart's impassioned greed
For what to her was beautiful indeed:
‘Kai-máta’—‘face-devouring gaze’
Her country's own poetic phrase
Had called the glance that so much love displays.
But how conceive her feeling? how
The picture fond her fancy drew,
The halo round his form she threw!
To that enamoured fancy, quite
Unused to the fair-tinted faces
Of our Caucasian northern races,
This Stranger, with his eyes of sparkling blue
That shone through shadows of a thoughtful brow
Embossed with Intellect, and full and white,
With clustered gold about it curled,
Seemed some high Being from another World!
August and beautiful and bright
To her he well might seem,
As you perchance would deem
Some Phidian Temple must have looked of old;
Where architrave and pediment arise,
With metope-squares of dauntless proud emprise,
And friezes full of life!—serenely bold
Broadly confronting the broad skies,
And throwing deep majestic shade
(As human brow o'er human eyes)
Into the interspaces made
By many a stately colonnade;—
As such a Temple must have looked when bare
Its snowy grace and lovely grandeur first
Upon the shouting people burst!
Its solemn charm that would have awed, almost
In the mere splendour of material lost;
Because so brilliant fresh and new,
So delicately tinted here and there
With rainbow colours pure and fair,
The sculptured Marvel stood in view;
The matchless groups around it rife
In stirring trance of pomp or strife,
Sharp from some famous chisel, every one;
The marble dust of recent working
In glittering specks about them lurking;
All just uncovered to the morning Sun!

V.

But fair as Phidian Temple tinged so purely,
That pure untinged white-terraced Fount corálline
Showed, with its baths cerulean and crystálline,
Whereon they gazed when not upon each other
Their lover-gaze delightedly was dwelling;
When looks, where Love was seated so securely,
To answering looks ceased passionately telling
The tide of tenderness each bosom swelling.
Then, as they watched the huge Steam-cloud that whitely
O'er the main pool, like some nest-brooding mother,
Spread swanlike wings the brilliant water shading,—
Enveloped and imparadised more brightly
In a Love-cloud as fervid and unfading,
They saw how richly, though from surface duller,
That still, suspended Mist reflected duly
The bubbling basin's amethystine colour;
Returning tint for lovely tint as truly
As in their mirrored eyes, fond, deep, untroubled,
They marked, upwelling ever freshly, newly,
Their mutual Love reflected and redoubled!

VI.

Then to the glen that fronts the islets twain
And to their isle itself they come—
That ever-singing isle—through all the train
Of water-birds that swarm the simmering plain,
Thick as the sower's air-scattered grain.
And then their bower of mánuka they gain
Already soothing with a sense of home.
The grateful viands follow, fountain-drest;
And then that churme monotonous, ne'er represt,
Lulls them again entranced to Love's Elysian rest.

BOOK THE FIFTH. STILL IN EDEN.

Canto the First. The Haunted Mountain.

I.

II.

So he, who when he had his will,
For pleasure always went up hill,
So Ranolf spoke; and so replied
His wildwood bride, the diamond-eyed,
When morning's beam began to burn,
Up-springing from their couch of fern
By charming Tára-wéra's side.
A little plot of smooth green grass—
By tapering trees thick-set and tall
Beneath grey rocks that rose o'er all,
Shut in behind—a verdurous wall
Circling that lawny flat so small
Down to the very water's edge,
That spread in front its liquid glass;—
Not far from where, 'mid reed and sedge,
The warm Mahana's rapid tide,
A mile-long stream scarce six feet wide,
Comes rushing through the open pass—
As seeks a hot and fevered child
Its Mother's bosom cool and mild—
To Tára-wéra's ample Lake;
This shallow niche, tree-girt and green,
With nought its still sweet charm to break,
The lovers' lonely bower had been.

III.

In sunshine stretching lightly o'er
The Lake's far end from shore to shore,
Long stripes of gauze-like awning lay—
In stripes serene and white as they,
Re-imaged on its bright blue floor.
And many a rocky rugged bluff,
With crimson-blossoming boscage rough
O'er beetling crest and crevice flung,—
White cliff or dark-green hill afar
With patches bleached of scarp and scar—
Stood boldly forward sunrise-fired,
Or back in sun-filled mist retired.
Untrembling, round the glistening rim
Of that expanse of blooming blue,
From headland bright or inlet's brim,
Long fringes of reflection hung.
Its ramparts stretched along the sky,
One mighty Mountain reared on high
Far o'er the rest a level crest,
With jutting rounded parapet
And rude rock-corbels rough-beset,
Half-blurred by time and tempest's fret;
While smooth its slopes came sweeping down
From that abraded cornice brown.
The mountain this, the ruddy steep,
That Ranolf, sun-awaked from sleep,
So longed to scale; and high in air
In glad imagination share
Its sky-possessing majesty
Of haughty isolation!—there
Into each dark recess to pry
And every sight and secret see
Its lofty level might reveal,
Or those grim fissures' depths conceal,
That split the Mountain into three.

IV.

About the heights, soft clouds a few,
Clung here and there like floating flue;
Like helpless sea-birds breeze-bereft,
Unmoving spread their pinions white—
From jutting crag, deep-bathed in light,
To slip away in snowy flight;
Or closely crouched in shadowy cleft,
Like lambing ewes the flock has left.
Below, o'erjoyed at darkness fleeing,
Reviving Nature woke again
To all the exceeding bliss of being!
The minnows leapt the liquid plain
In shoals—each silvery-shivering train,
A sudden dash of sprinkled rain!
The wild-duck's black and tiny fleet
Shot in-and-out their shy retreat;
The cormorant left his crowded tree
And stretched his tinselled neck for sea;
All Nature's feathered favourites poured
To their adored undoubted Lord
Of light and heat, accordance sweet
Of pure impassioned revelry;
And honey-bird and mocking-bird
And he of clearest melody,
The blossom-loving bell-bird,—each
Delicious-throated devotee
In happy ignorance framed to be
Content with rapture—longing-free
For life or love they cannot reach—
Like chimes rich-tuned, to heaven preferred
The praise of their mellifluous glee!
Each lurking lyrist of the grove
With all his might sung all his love;
Till every foliage-filled ravine
And bower of amaranthine green
Rang persevering ecstasy!

V.

With free elastic hearts that shone
In joy as fresh as morning's own—
Each seated in a light canoe
The kind Lake-villagers supplied—
Amo's the lighter—gayer too,
With snowy tufts of feathers tied
In rows along each ruddy side,—
The pair went paddling, fancy-led;
For here no wond'rous sights of dread
Or beauty lurked to guide their quest
As at Mahana—nothing strange,
Or out of Nature's wonted range.
Yet Ranolf marked with lively zest
What charms the changeful scene possest:
The billowy-tumbling hills—the crags—
The smooth green slopes fern-carpeted;
Low cliffs with feathery foliage graced;
Rock-palisades emerging pale
And grey; and precipices faced
With head-stones—close-set armour-scale
Of gothic-pointed bristling flags;
Flat islets crowned with wood—cliff-bound;
And lake-side bowers and canopies;
And caves and grottoes within these!
And lichened rocks that singly stand
Detached from green umbrageous land,
Mere pedestals for single trees;
Or, jutting out with jagged arms
All plumed and fair with greenery, bear
Into the Lake the forest's charms;
And with the bank that proudly swells,
A wooded wall without a strand,
Make niches, nooks, and liquid cells,
With interlacing boughs o'erspanned.

Canto the Second. Sports on the Lake.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

Thus ever and anon, this buoyant Child,
Free as the winds and as the waters wild,
With wayward whims the time beguiled:
Thus would the tranquil tenor of her joy
Still quicken into rapids of delight;
And break meandering into branches bright
Of manifold emotions that would rove
Diversely, but to give redoubled force
And sweet variety to one sure course—
Spreading and sparkling only to unite
In one broad current of unfailing Love.
Such simple arts would she employ
To tamper with, and tease, and toy
With her delight, its depth to prove;
With sportive sallies, sly disguises,
Arch mockeries—mimicries—surprises:
So on her heart impress a sense
More varied, vivid and intense
Of bliss all golden-pure without alloy,
And Love no time could cool, no fond fruition cloy!

Canto the Third. The Cicada.

I.

II.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

“Well, then, methinks, that surging sea
Of resonant shrill melody
Rings out a thoughtless answer free,
Whence one may frame a thoughtful plea:
‘O human Insect! sad Truth-seeker—
Which of us two is wiser—weaker?
Your senses—those deep reasoning powers
You will within their bounds compress,
May take a wider range than ours,
How vastly wider! none the less
They both are dwarfed, unspeakably
Fall short of and are distanced by
The infinite Reality:
And all beyond their feeble reach
Will doubtless seem and be for each
A blank—a void—mere nothingness!
O grand indeed the gains you boast,
The ever deepening, widening host
Of wonders Science as she presses
Into the Mystery's first recesses,
Works out, worms into, proves or guesses!—
—Creation, like a firework splendid
Ever exploding, unexpended;
As endlessly it whirls and flies
Still breaking into brilliancies
Of stranger gleam and lovelier guise:—
—Organic Nature, in its flow
By inorganic guided, so
Divinely from its hidden fount;
Germs, gemmules, cells; upstrivings shy;
And those consummate craftsmen—Chance!
Environment or Circumstance—
With aims so clear in harmony
Combining to evolve and mould
Such plastic structures manifold:
Their agents, climate, fire, and frost,
Food, famine, skilled to crush—uphold,
Choose what had best survive or perish,
The lower to check, the higher to cherish,
Make progress sure at any cost!
So force in falling stones, and heat
And cold, can make and mar and mount
From starred frost-flowers to crystalled rock,
Tree, insect, bird, beast, Man complete!
Though still outstands that stumbling-block
Of Science—Life! her pride to shock
And Matter's despot-sway to mock!—
Well—as so brilliantly the blank
Beyond our powers perceptive teems
For you with wonders that would rank
With us as visionary dreams;
So surely is there something still
The blank beyond your own to fill;
Something unsoundable by Man,
If finite reason never can
The Infinite comprise or span;
Yet what (a point to raise no strife)
Within that blank so likely rife
As mightier facts of Spirit-Life?—
Dreams?—aye, but all you pray for—prize,
Within that realm of vague surmise
May well to loftier beings be
Demonstrable reality!—
O human Insect! wiser—weaker—
O suicidal secret-seeker,
What if you left your “proofs” alone
And joined our reckless rapturous Pæan
Of clear confiding trustfulness,
That once so charmed the jovial Teian,
Whose loves and lyre and brimming beaker
Were all o'erthrown by one grape-stone
That choked his life out, just as you
Your life of life by laying stress
On doubts perhaps as trivial too;
Wresting despair with so much pain
Out of a scheme not your poor brain
Nor ours can compass or contain,
Exhaust, unravel, or explain!’”—

Canto the Fourth. A loving Questioner.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

Canto the Fifth. A cheery Theorist.

I.

II.

III.

“For say—for powers so proved—what name
But ‘Mind’—could reason find or frame?—
And does not one strange fact proclaim,
Nay, prove this bounded Mind of Man
In some accordance made, or grown,
With that all-boundless Mind unknown
That did the mighty Cosmos plan—
Faint spark from its omnific Flame?—
A thousand years that human Mind
Its subtle sciences designed
Of numbers—angles—ratios—lines—
Complex ingenious symbol-signs—
Pure brainwork as the wildest dream!
Then, when the long research of Time,
For Man's rapt gaze withdraws the veil
That hides the Universe sublime,
To his amazement, lo! the scheme
Of the majestic fabric stands
Before him, fitting to the Scale
So long prepared by his own hands;
In strictest keeping ranged and wrought
With fine gradations, ratios, rules,
Spun out of his unaided Thought
So many an age before, and taught
As abstract Science in his schools.
'Tis as if God himself blazed out
A moment there! beyond all doubt
Perceived—the still small voice profound
Speaking for once with trumpet-sound!
A glimpse of the All-Puïssant say
A moment deigning to display
Some kinship of its mind with ours—
Its infinite with our finite powers!
To prove how in our mind could lurk
Some power to scale some little way
Unconsciously the self-same heights
Where soared its own imperial flights;
Power to invent, construct, do work,
Though far-off, faint, in thought alone,
In strict accordance with its own!

IV.

V.

VI.

“Why should indeed the Power that gave
To man that mental standard, found
As true, complete, as wish could crave
To gauge the sensuous Universe
As its majestic shows unfurled—
Be deemed to mock, as stinted, bound
By some defect, some flaw unsound,
Man's dearer need with any worse
A standard of his moral World?
Our Love, distinctly his own dower
As is that calculating power—
As surely our one gauge, the best—
His spiritual Creation's test;
Why should it be less true, complete?
Why should it only prove a cheat?

VII.

VIII.

“But why, because that mighty Will
Cannot be said, within the bound
Of our perceptions to fulfil
All that the test, so true and sound,
Demands—insists on; why declare
Its wondrous working ceases where
Our poor perceptions do?—why fear
To say that what it breaks off here
It perfects in some other sphere?
Why carry through all Time and Space
The flaw we only know has place
Within the narrow field we trace?
Why this avowed, yet finite Wrong,
Into the Infinite prolong?—
More true to Reason 'tis, to trust
That standard of the Good and Just
And Loving—trust its dictates too.
If this world wrongs that standard true,
It wrongs God's Love, God's Right no less;
That wrong His justice must redress:
And how? but by some other state
Where compensation must await
All wrongs endured by small or great;
All Love's requirements be supplied—
The God-given standard justified?

IX.

X.

Canto the Sixth. Love beats Logic.

I.

Like him who glancing at the sun's full splendour
Is by that lightning-ringed blue disc half-blinded,
Then Ranolf, by the greatness of his theme
So dazzled, told the Maiden simple-minded
Whose thirsting eyes, with looks how rapt and tender
Drank fawn-like at his voice's cheery stream,
Of one Great Spirit ubiquitous;—for ever
Unknown;—invisible—intangible—
Inaudible; whose nature none can tell;
Subtler than Thought in essence; and yet never
To be disproved—discarded—disavowed;
Educing Good with infinite endeavour
From Evil for some mystic end allowed;
Whose work, Mankind, would be a cheat detected,
A palpable abortion and confusion
(Truly an inconceivable conclusion!)
If not in some serener Sphere perfected:
For He was good—all Life and time proclaimed it,
Where Good was ever in the slow ascendant;
And that blind bias (Conscience as we named it)—
Towards what seems good and better—though dependent
On other powers, for knowledge, be it granted,
Of what is good and better,—was implanted
Within our brain at first, and could not be
Belied or outraged by Himself who framed it;
So must the Evil and the wrong be righted
In some great World of bliss we could not see,
Where suffering innocence would be requited,
And ties of rent affections reunited.
And this, which Reason pleaded for,—the best
And brightest of that Spirit's emanations—
Souls in their very structure revelations
Of his high nature on their own impressed,
Had felt and died for; on the facts insisting
Their souls were forced and fashioned to attest—
The certain Life immortal, to remove
And remedy all mortal woes existing;
And that supreme predominance of Love!
And therefore they who most their Souls may nourish
On Love, and hearken to his high decreeing,
Doing all right and every wrong repressing,
With pure self-sacrifice for others' blessing—
Must be the least unlike that Power supernal—
Most with that Will in their poor way agreeing;
Must be the fittest to survive and flourish
In that transcendant Sphere of Life eternal—
Of ever blest and beatific Being.

II.

III.

And though he showed himself content no more
Even now than in old student-days of yore
To practise and abide by what he saw
Even then might be for Man a settled Law;
He could not, while he reasoned, quite forget
The possible truth so long before descried,
Which of itself had made him feel as yet
How slight his power to be that Maiden's guide;
That time-developed secret of the soul,
How the conviction of its glorious goal
And ultimate high destiny divine,
Is haply not designed to be the dower
Of any play of intellectual power—
No cold deduction Logic's subtlest line
Could dimly draw from shadowy postulate,
Mental or moral axiom overfine,
Admitted or disputed, as innate
Or for purblind Experience to acquire;
No theme to wrangle on with wordy strife:
But down—far down—in gulfs of Spirit profound,
Which action and keen passion only sound—
Lies, a pure gem for purified desire;
But rather, perfect gold by patience won,
Must by severer Alchemy be run
Out of each Soul plunged in the actual fire,
And smelted in the crucible of Life.

IV.

No! he could not forget that Truths like these
May lurk secreted for the Soul to seize
Out of the chaos of her own emotions;
Heights of celestial rapture—depths like Ocean's
Of sacred sorrow; mystic yearnings speech
Is speechless for no intellect can reach;
Divinely-darkling inmost sympathies,
Dimly discerned—awakened—half-exprest
Haply by the blind might of Music best
Echoing Infinitude; ‘strange melodies’
That lustrous Song-Child languished to impart,
Breathing his boundless Love through boundless Art—
Impassioned Seraph from his mint of gold
By our full-handed Master-Maker flung;
By him whose lays, like eagles, still upwheeling
To that shy Empyrean of high feeling,
Float steadiest in the luminous fold on fold
Of wonder-cloud around its sun-depths rolled.
Whether he paint, all patience and pure snow,
Pompilia's fluttering innocence unsoiled;—
In verse, though fresh as dew, one lava-flow
In fervour—with rich Titian-dyes aglow—
Paint Paracelsus to grand frenzy stung,
Quixotic dreams and fiery quackeries foiled;
Whose rocket-rush of Power, at death's far height
Melts in a silvery rain of loving Light;—
Or—of Sordello's delicate Spirit unstrung
For action, in its vast Ideal's glare
Blasting the Real to its own dumb despair,—
On that Venetian water-lapped stair-flight,
In words condensed to diamond, indite
A lay too like the Sun—dark with excessive bright:—
Still,—though the pulses of the world-wide throng
He wields, with racy life-blood beat so strong,—
Subtlest Dissector of the Soul in song!—
—No! with that possible Soul-truth full in sight,
'Twas little disappointment, less surprise,
To Ranolf that he read in Amo's eyes
Not all the satisfaction and delight
She looked for when the queries first she pressed
Which he with more delight and greater zest
Would doubtless, if he could, have set at rest.

V.

But all these things apart—to them the Real
The Present seemed so rapturous an Ideal,
It seemed almost a sin to speculate
Or spend a thought upon another state;
Seemed flat ingratitude to Him who spread
A banquet so superb his guests before,
To ask, when on its dainties they had fed,
What His great bounty had provided more?
While sitting at His luxury-laden board,
To guess what fair festivities the Lord
Of the redundant feast had yet in store,
Music or dance to follow when 'twas o'er!

VI.

VII.

And now, upon a knoll beside the Lake,
Embowered with trees their resting-place they make.
The savoury light repast was over, won
By Manu's indefatigable gun,
Whose echo through the day they oft had caught
Faint from the glens or o'er the waters brought.
Their young elastic spirits they resigned
To the soft hour's delicious influence,
And the full consciousness of all the bliss
Of love like theirs in such a life as this;
As sweet and free to their enamoured sense
As the pure air without a sound or sigh
They breathed in its sunlit serenity.
The solitude—the stillness so intense—
The blue ethereal lake—the liquid sky—
The silent banks and bluffs that watched around;—
The silent beams that broadly visible streamed
Through limpid veils of atmosphere, and gleamed
Along the silent hills that looked, spell-bound,
As if they felt the shadows o'er them grow,
From every fold and crevice creeping slow
And linking to exclude each slanting ray
That slumberous on their burnished shoulders lay:—
Or where those faint cliffs seemed in fading day
Refining to a vision far away;
Soft tints aërial—tender streaks of shade,
Or mottling stains their painted verdure made.—
All was so rapt and mute and motionless—
The pictured dream of lonely loveliness
Diffused o'er hearts that needed no such balm
The soft contagion of its soothing calm!
Twin hearts—mere atoms in the wide expanse—
They seemed absorbed in its voluptuous trance;
Yet 'twas the rapturous love that through them thrilled
That rather into Nature's frame instilled
Their own impassioned warmth, until it glowed
As fit for spirits in bliss some high divine abode!

Canto the Seventh. An airy Nest.

I.

Now Sunset's hushed and awful Splendour fills
The solemn scene;—transfigures heaven and earth
With luminous glory as in strange new-birth;
Clothes with vermilion woods the Eastern hills;
And where the Lake should spread its glassy length
Leaves a great hollow of one hue—blood-red
As the mysterious garments round Him rolled
Who travelling in the greatness of his strength,
In glory of apparel unalloyed,
Though stained like one who doth the winepress tread,
From Edom and from Bozrah came of old.
A single bar of light, a silver thread—
Stretched o'er the incarnadined and hollow void—
Betrays the viewless surface. On each hand
See how the headlands glow in solid gold!
See in the midst that mighty Mountain stand
One ruby!—deepening off through bluer shade
And bluer, towards the North the hills and sky
Lose more and more of that ensanguined dye—
Through all the purples of the pansy fade;
And in their darkest, most impressive gloom,
Rival the richest violet's loveliest bloom.

II.

III.

“But see! how through the floating, thin,
And tender purple gloom, one star
Is wildly throbbing—faint and far!
And lost in liquid twilight, look,
Where others lurk its depths within!—
Come, dearest, then! in yonder nook
See how, from its sun-smitten slopes
The snowy-crimson trees outthrow
Their sturdy stems that downward grow,
All firmly laced, securely braced
And cabled to the rocks with ropes
Of their own branches, backward bent
Along each coalescing trunk,
Half in its rugged column sunk
As up to roots again they run,
Stem, branch, and root, distinct yet one!
As if they saw and would prevent,
With conscious aim intelligent,
The great tree's risk so imminent
Of slipping down the steep descent.

IV.

“But does the risk produce the aim?—
On level ground no cables sprout:”
(Thinking aloud, all this, no doubt)
“Or if in some rare case thrown out—
Perchance where casual winds create
A partial risk, but not the same—
The cable hangs its listless weight
Unreaching earth; its would-be roots,
A tuft of red abortive shoots.
Adaptive Nature's powers are great;
And her organic products mate
And match each shifting change and chance
Of inorganic Circumstance;
Set each to each in ordered dance,
With a discriminating might
Of blindness keener than all sight;
And kindling here, and quenching there
At random—but with luck so rare
And mutual, ever full and fair
The cycle of Existence leave.
The trees that could their cable weave
Might stand—and those that could not—fall;
I wonder what the cause they call,
Gave this though not another tree
That cunning first propensity
For veering cables out at all!
Was it itself, itself to save
Such self-preserving prescience gave?—
This ‘struggle for existence,’ saith
Your Science, everywhere we view;
Yes! and 'tis Life's untiring true
Protest against and hate of Death!

V.

“But come, my sweet, since there at last,
The pendent trees are anchored fast;
Suppose a fern-filled mat we sling
To one, up high, of those that fling
Their branches out most straight and stout!
So fine the night we need devise
No roof against those loving skies.
How pleasant there to lie awake
And try if any glimmering sheen
Or shimmer of the sleeping Lake
So far beneath—through all the green—
The latticed screen of boughs between,
A leafy labyrinth—could be seen!
How sweet to lie up there so high,
And half asleep, so drowsily,
To all the faint night-noises hark
That make the hush more deep; and mark,
Watching the dim o'erbrooding sky,
How one by one and two by two
The moving stars come blinking through
The unmoving leaves—chink after chink—
Slow-pacing!—or if you should sleep
I might alone a vigil keep
Sometimes for mere delight; and think
What mighty Suns we use to link
Our tiny memories with; and how
Keen Sirius and red-flashing fierce
Aldebaran that deep Space may pierce,
And have no other end just now
For me, but with familiar rays
To call back far-off scenes and days!
How the faint Pleiads are less clear
Than fond regards they bring—so dear!
And old Orion upside down,
Mythic Bœotian huntsman brown—
Though here such different names he own,
Shines grand as his antique renown;
And flings abroad his giant limbs
In daring splendour nothing dims!
Although head foremost towards the sea
In all his glittering panoply
He plunges, eager to return
To those dear glorious lands below,
Far down below, where long ago
I first beheld his ardours burn!—

VI.

“And we will settle, nestling there
Which way to-morrow we shall fare;
If back to strange Orákei's stream
Whose dark-green banks are chequered bright
With many a gaudy scar and seam
Sulphureous yellow—red and white,
Where over crusted strata grey
A hundred hot-springs steam and play:
Or shall we to the Lake hard by
Of woody Oka-réka hie,
That mocks you with deceitful mien,
By loving cliffs encompassed round—
Fair captive, so resigned, serene,
Lulled in a seeming sleep profound;
Yet all the while slips off unseen
In secret diving underground;
And bursts out into open day
A beautiful Cascade, they say,
All flash and foam, a mile away!
A sudden startling change complete
From mimic death to leaping life,
As yours, my wily winsome cheat,
This morn when starting to your feet
At touch of that rude ready knife!”

VII.

What answer? but a laugh of fond assent
From her whose head upon his shoulder leant;
As, gaily springing up, the Maid addrest
Herself to that delightful task—to aid
In building birdlike such a pendulous nest
'Mid twisted stems over the waters thrown,
As charmed with thoughts of airy rest
Lightly leaf-canopied and star-inrayed;
Toyed with by tender touches of the Moon;
Bare to each influence of the fine-flecked skies;
And yet secure as ever flung the boon
Of sweet unconsciousness o'er lovers' eyes—
Yet in secluded luxury uplaid
As ever rest enjoyed by lovers lone
In any green serenity of shade.

VIII.

So through the fervid Autumn's lingering glow
But Life and Love's young Spring-time; revelling so
In Eden-scenes as lovely-strange
As to the lover's power to change
All scenes to Edens, ever yet displayed
An Eden ready-made:
So, custom-licensed to be blest and bless
In luxury of lawful lawlessness,
Did our unbridled bridal pair
Pass their wild-honeymoon no moon
Restricted—and, arriving all too soon,
Homeward to Rotorua slowly strayed.

BOOK THE SIXTH WAR.

Canto the First. The Beleaguered Fortress.

I.

II.

This storm of war by Kangapo was brewed:
'Twas he had roused this raging multitude
Of Uri-wéra, Nati-pórou—all
The restless spirits turbulent and rude
Amid the neighbouring tribes, South, East or West
He found, or made, obedient to his call:
For stung by Tangi's cool disdain—his breast
Black with foul bile that Amo could arrest
His schemes by flight; and worst, that such a prize
Should by this chance-sent Stranger be possessed—
One whom he would so heartily despise,
But that he hated him so much, and feared,—
Aye, feared!—he could no more endure those eyes
That met his own so calmly and appeared
To look right through his soul and life of lies,
So high and safe above his sorceries—
More than the hound the Moon's unmoving gaze
Fixed on him mutely till he howls—and feels,
How through his canine consciousness it steals—
The fascination of those searching rays,
That read his inmost thoughts, know all his ways,
And fix him all the more, the more he bays:—
Stung with such rabid jealousy and pain,
Less for his own loss than the other's gain:—
For he was of a nature Hate could move
More deeply even than successful love;
And even his Love burnt livid, like the flames
Of liquids lit for joy in Christmas games,
With bitter selfishness 'twas so imbued;
While Hate that could through Love's triumphant mood
Survive, on baffled Love would surely prey
And batten into boundless life and play:—
With all these feelings fuming thus, the Priest
Had sought out Tangi's many secret foes
And hollow friends; these—most in peace retained
By dread of Tangi, and as great at least
Of powers himself from his dark Atuas gained—
Were prompt to seize whatever chance arose,
That seemed to promise surety of success
Against a Chief, whose frank blunt haughtiness
Left many a rankling grudge, in hearts that owned
His chieftainship while backed by strength; and more
In neighbours not dependent; most of whom
Could always point, besides, to some heirloom
Of injury—ancient grievance safe in store
Kept to produce, parade as unatoned,
Harangue on and grow wild about, whene'er
Interest might prove a breach was worth their care.
And now that Priest's defection—proffered aid
To Tangi's foes, such tempting juncture made!
That sorcerer's help, to warn, foresee, foretell,
And ever keep at hand, whate'er befel,
The fresh reserve of some religious spell
The fiercest Atua's favour to compel—
With such ally what could against them be
The force or fortune of the ‘Sounding Sea’?—
And readier even than these for reckless raid
Was many a youth with jealous fury fired,
Who, when that liquid landslip set her free
From bonds the “tapu” had around her knit,
To Amo's hand had fruitlessly aspired.
So, mustering quick in arms—sharp lances fit
For thrust or whirl; flat spears with cleaving blade
Of iron-hard wood; smooth clublets of green jade
Whale's bone or black obsidian: and, though few,
The white man's lightning weapons dearly prized
For such death-dealing powers, swift, safe, and true
As made all slaughter's ruder tools despised:—
—Bearing of berries dried sufficient store,
Hínau—karaka; sun-cured fish and maize;
Their siege-provisions for not many days,
As trusting to catch Tangi unprepared
And take his fortress by surprise before
His distant friends could to the rescue pour:—
—Dragging—(by dint of desperate labour, shared
Among thick-crowding, oft-renewed relays—
A hundred straining limbs and voices timed
As one, by that wild chaunt in chorus chimed)—
Or carrying bodily—their big canoes,
O'er hill and dale, with fierce incessant toil,
And frantic ardour nothing could infuse
But rampant greed secure of blood and spoil:—
—Leaving the friends of Tangi as they passed—
Too weak alone, each hamlet, to withstand
The headlong progress of so large a band,—
Within their palisadoes shut up fast:—
Thus had the host with hopes of victory flushed,
Through Tangi's country unimpeded rushed;
And now were camped by Rotorua's Lake
In swarms resolved his island-fort to take,
Under the leadership of one, by far
The boldest, vainest that had joined the war—
And ‘Whetu-riri’ named—‘The Angry Star.’

III.

Nor deem that Priest had wholly laid aside
The object of his passion and his pride
So long—his native tribe's success and power.
Incensed to be so baffled and defied,
His aim in giving Tangi's foes their hour
Of partial triumph, was but to reduce
The Chieftain's haughtiness till he should be
More pliant to his own ascendancy.
These crowds were tools and creatures for his use;
For well he knew whenever he might please,
He could the tumult he had raised appease;
Upon their superstitious fears could play,
And fright his new adherents from the fray
With well-invented omens of dismay.
This crooked course to so concealed an end,
Did to his mind his project recommend;
'Twas doubly dear to him to win his will
By secret exercise of sinuous skill;
The consciousness of cunning mastery made
A guerdon of success almost as dear
As aught for which his cunning schemes were laid.
Yet would he not even then, with insight clear,
Deliberate purpose to himself confess,
With cool deceptive art to forge or feign
Omens and signs sinistrous, to restrain
The assailants at the height of their success;
But he had taught himself to think and feel
The Atuas ever favoured his appeal—
Could with a little management be brought
To give him mystic aid whenever sought.
And at the outset, glad was he to find,
Tangi's own acts to aid his plans inclined;
For the old Chief was so devoid of fear,
When rumours of invasion reached his ear
By foemen such as these, the thought he spurned,
A notion too absurd to entertain;
And still refused, when surer news he learned,
With obstinate and absolute disdain,
To sanction against danger threatening thence,
Any unwonted measures of defence.
So when the storm broke o'er him, and he found
The tide of War advancing all around,
He gathered hastily a sturdy band
Of staunch adherents readiest to his hand:
And on that island hill-cone, girt and swathed
In tiers, with terrace, ditch and smooth-scarped bank,
Where'er its natural slope less steeply sank;
Each terrace a successive fighting stage;
Behind each fosse, a bristling palisade
Of posts with carved and monstrous heads arrayed,
Red-ochred, grim, and grinning scorn and rage;—
There they ensconced themselves to wait unscathed
Till succours should be hurried up by sure
And faithful emissaries swift despatched;
There, in their fortress, as they felt, secure—
Withdrawing from each ditch its wooden bridge,
Lifting each terrace-ladder o'er its ridge,
Each gate closed fast,—there scornfully they watched,
Behind the walls, each movement of the foe;—
Or frantically darting in and out
The palisades, kept rushing to and fro
With wild-tossed limbs and yell and taunting shout;
Or wasting at long range a charge or two
Of precious ammunition, if it chanced,
Prowling about, a prying war-canoe
Close to the isle too temptingly advanced;
Or some marauding, reconnoitring band
Upon the garden-level dared to land.—
Thus, keeping ever at the boiling fret
The fury that could find scant outlet yet,
Thus did they shout, from morn to even-close,
Or dance defiance of their swarming foes.

IV.

Twice had the foe made fierce attack;
With slaughter twice been beaten back;
For Tangi's staunch and stalwart band—
The skill and valour far-renowned
That marked the veteran's cool command—
The lines that wound that hill around—
And last, not least, unknown before,
The dreaded weapon Ranolf bore
That through the press could swiftly hurl
A shower of deaths at every whirl,—
All these together made a sum
Of tough impediments no rush
Of Uri-wéra's hosts could crush,
Or arts, so far essayed, o'ercome.
Yet for a fresh assault, one more
Ere they should give the contest o'er,
They roused, revived their flagging force
And spirit dashed by ill-success;
Revolving every rude resource
Of savage war's ingeniousness:
Each tried, untried experiment
Old lore could teach, new craft invent;
And plying all the wild man's ways
Their forced factitious wrath to raise
And blow their fury to a blaze.

Canto the Second. War needs Idealizing.

I.

II.

III.

Aye, indeed!
These men were the right genuine stuff
To rule a World—a hero-breed—
High minds, such as by instinct feed
On mighty tasks,—Souls large enough
For Empire!—Empire, never won
As never kept, beneath the Sun,
By slow hack-hearts that never knew
A spur beyond material greed!
The mere ‘utilitarian’ crew
Whose huckstering God is only Gold;
That ‘cheaply bought’ be ‘dearly sold,’
Their sordid creed and single heed;
Whose grovelling zeal,—their Altar still
The counter—and their Ark the till—
At that base shrine would sacrifice
Power, honour, Empire!—all the ties
That keep us one; whatever wakes
The patriot glow, the pride of race;—
All that, with love of Order, makes
A people of a populace,
And any people great! whate'er
Of quick and kindling sympathy
With England's children everywhere—
Our common claim to one great name,
One heritage of storied Fame,
It was our boast, our strength to share;—
That conscious thrill of kindred blood
Which false refinement feigns to raise,
Evaporating all its good,
Into a fine and feeble phase
Of vague and vain Philanthropy;
But kept alive,—yet none the less
Alert to let no furtherance slip
Of all-embracing comradeship
And generous great wide-heartedness,—
The more it can inspire, expand,
So much more glorious, powerful, grand,
Becomes each human brotherhood;
And ever, just as each has grown
To greatness or remained unknown,
Did each this genial warmth possess
Defective or in bright excess;
The savage, for his tribe alone,
The Roman for a World—his own!

IV.

But O thou Mother-Isle afar,
Whose fame Thyself alone couldst mar!
Should those mere sensuous saws indeed
(If good and true to clothe and feed)
Be idolized to supersede
The holiest duties, highest aims
Thy Rulers owe, thy welfare claims;
And they and Thou, in pride secure,
Be deaf to all the grand demands
The glorious Gift of world-wide lands—
Birthright of all thy swarming sons
Won by the mighty deathless dead,
Thy heroes' blood like water shed,—
Thunders upon Thee; then be sure,
England, my Country! nought avails
Thy wealth, thy commerce; he who runs
May read upon thy whited wall,
The ‘Mene, Tekel’ of thy fall!
Then hide thy head for shame—then say
And sigh—thy soaring Sun has past
Its zenith; own thyself at last—
Weighed in the fitting trader-scales,
Found wanting; then confess thy day
Of greatness done—thy glory gone—
Thy peddling kingdom passing fast away!—

V.

VI.

But not in vain—not void of gain
Devoted deaths so nobly dared!
Deaths that keep living unimpaired
The spirit to raise into the Real
Our English Empire's grand Ideal!
To build up, and from clime to clime
Extend that civil fabric sound
Of balanced social forces Time
Has their securest safeguard found;
Which, best for ordered Freedom still,
Still leaves the changeful Public Will
Unchangeably imperial-crowned!
That Empire—for the wisely free
A kindred haunt, a kindly home!
No poison-spreading Upas-Tree;
No Rata-Myrtle, pressing down
The life it wrecks to raise its own;
Nor e'er while sheltering like old Rome
Perhaps half-stifling—realm or race
In baneful shade—too strict embrace!
Rather some bounteous-burgeoning Vine,
Strong-stemmed—tough-jointed—rooted fast,
About whose purple-clustered vast
Luxuriance beauteous runners blow,
And rich strange blossoms interlace;
All round about each other curled
To swathe and wreathe the rotund World
With flowers of Freedom; petals fine
Of peaceful Glory; fruits that shine
'Mid equal rights and laws and grow
To mellowest richness in the glow
Of Reverence for all duties clear,
And all emotions—deep—divine!
All for the common strength and good
Enringed with many a tendril-twine
Of mutual help and brotherhood:
And woven from them all perchance—
Of fittest growths and finest blent,
From many a region far and near,
Their central garland of supreme
Impartial earnest governance!
And for the sovran ornament
Of that majestic anademe—
Climax and star that world-cymar
To crown—a world-wide cynosure—
Some peerless Lily, say, or pure
Camellia breathing the sweet power
White goodness has to sway—allure!—
—Nay, waive weak metaphors! What flower
Were emblem worthy to recall
The full deserts most favouring fate
May on such culmination shower!
—The life-long loyalty to all
The limits of that high estate;
All duties with a genial charm
Of gentle dignity fulfilled—
Grace by a Mind for ever warm
With clear exalted aims instilled;
The lofty courage, and no less
True woman's lively tenderness
And sympathy unerring, wide,
For suffering hearts where'er descried—
Right wisdom!—all the worth we see,
And seeing, love, revere and bless—
Victoria—Queen who dost possess
All worth this Age's Best confess
Best fits this Age's Queen—in Thee!

VII.

Canto the Third. The grand Assault.

I.

II.

Before the faint wide smile of dawn, so wan
And grey, to steal up Night's sad face began,
Crammed in canoes bold Whetu-riri's host
With favouring breeze had to Mokoia crossed.
With hearts high-beating to the strand they spring,
Each band behind its Chief; without a check
Hasten through grove and garden—many a bed
That late in such luxuriant neatness spread,
Of melons, maize and taro—now a wreck.
The outer palisades the foremost reach;
Take the positions prearranged for each;
And close around the Fort, a swarming ring:—
Then—as no challenge came—no warrior stirred,
And not a sound about the Fort was heard;
At once, like one—six hundred throats or more
Sent thundering skyward such a sea-like roar
As old Mokoia never heard before:
Stern—silent—in determined mood
Within those loop-holed walls of wood,
Alert, be sure, old Tangi stood;
He and his stalwart warriors true,
Alert, well-armed and watchful too!
Each short sharp-edged batoon of stone
Grass-green, or white of polished bone,—
That from the hand no foe might wring
The weapon at close grips—was bound
With thongs each sinewy wrist around;
But loose the long-armed axe was left,
Both hardwood blade and pointed heft—
A dagger, or an axe to swing,
Just as the warrior thrust or cleft.
The precious muskets, rude and few,
Their blunted flints well-chipped anew,
All primed and cocked, were pointing through
The palisades, behind whose breast
Keen, eager, fierce, the clansmen pressed,
Like wild-beasts waiting for a spring.
But yet no tongue the stillness broke,
No shout of wild defiance woke;
For to that threatening, thundering strain,
The sole reply the Chief would deign
Was one brief proverb, as his hand
Waved silence to his eager band:
And that firm lip, comprest before,
A haughty smile contemptuous wore;
“Ay, come!” he growled—“come on to shell
Cockles on Kátikáti's shore!”
That long-disputed dangerous land,
As every Maori knew so well,
Fit for no tool but spear and brand;
On whose contested sands and rocks,
Who came got nothing but hard knocks;
For, plucked from that long home of strife
A limpet might have cost a life!
Hence grown a gibe for all who set
Their hearts on gain they ne'er would get.

IV.

But soon as Tangi's taunt was flung,
And while the roar redoubled rung,
The assailing ranks disparting wide,—
There forward rushed—a gloomy wood
It seemed, or some great tidal wave,
In doubtful light the dawning gave!
A hundred of the bravest brave
Swept darkling up in order good;
Each in his left hand holding high
A bundle huge of brushwood dry
And withered fern that hid him quite—
Him and the fire-brand in his right.
Against the fort their heaps they piled,
And soon the flames were raging wild;
For still the breeze that brought them o'er
Blew freshly from the further shore.
It lighted up, that sudden glare,
The fort—the shore—the swarming, bold,
Blue, ghastly faces writhing there
With wrath and frenzy uncontrolled!
The fern became a mass of fire,
A brilliant yeast of surging gold;
And whirling darkly from the pyre
The smoke in russet volumes rolled
With showers of sparks and frond and spray
Red-hot, or floating filmy-grey.
Old Tangi, Ranolf, and his train
Of warriors strove, and strove in vain
To heave the blazing heaps aside;
No naked limbs or clothed could bide
That heat—no lungs could long sustain
The smoke that, blinding, stifling, dense,
Drove ever thicker through the fence.
So forced from that first outwork, they
With teeth that gnashed in scornful rage,
And shouts of fury burst away
Leaping and clambering up to wage
The fight upon a higher stage;
Headlong as alligators bounce
With water-snakes and bull-frogs harsh,
Out of some rank rush-covered marsh,
In river-depths to plunge and flounce—
In Hayti or the Isle made glad
With springs perennial crystal-fed—
When some crab-hunting negro-lad
Has fired their reedy crackling bed.

V.

Then wild with joy the ‘Angry Star,’
At this success—the first the war
Vouchsafed his arms—let loose again
His rampant pride, his boastful vein.
By fear, by prudence undebarred,
Up to the fence, black, tottering, charred—
(His feet,—with green flax-sandals shod
Prepared for this, the reeking sod
And glowing embers safely trod)
He bounded; took his dauntless stand
With granite-headed axe in hand
Beneath it, and began to rain
A shower of blows with might and main,
As each had been his last for life,
On crumbling post and crashing stake,
Broad entrance for his band to make.
There,—bellowing loud his battle-song,
His favourite song in such a strife,
While all the less adventurous throng
(Save six or eight who lent their aid)
Until the breach might be essayed
A more respectful distance kept,—
Less man than frenzied fiend of hell
He raved and roared and danced and leapt
And right and left his weapon swept—
A blow at every leap and yell
Against that smoking citadel:

VI.

Now all upon that windward side
The fallen fence left passage wide,
And Whetu-riri's raging host
The ditch and barrier swiftly crossed;
While Tangi's men retreating, threw
Themselves inside the rampart new;
And as the palisades they passed
Made every sliding panel fast,
Till round the fort the assailant horde
Upon the second platform poured.
Then out—unable to restrain
His pent-up wrath, his fierce disdain,
Or patient wait his foes' attack;
With all his bravest at his back,—
Just as the glorious Sun again
Slipped silvery from the mountains black
With panting disc upfloating free—
Out rushed at last the ‘Sounding Sea’
In wild ferocious majesty,
His battle-cry resounding loud
Above the tumult of the crowd!
“Now, forward, now, my Sons with me—
Now forward to the Land of Death!—”
That shout o'er all the hubbub swelled
Of casual shots and bulwarks felled
And stakes that crashed and fiends that yelled,
Distinct as—from the midnight's core
Where leaps the blue sheet-lightning's blaze
And hissing rains in torrents pour,
The dread Caffrarian lion's roar
That shakes the earth to which he lays
His head and thunders—rises o'er
And deeper-volumed rolls beneath
The angry bellowings that disclose
Where stamp, upstarting from repose
Whole herds of snorting buffaloes!
Where'er that Chieftain charged, dismayed
His foes fell back like huddling sheep
The wild-dog drives into a heap;
Or brief the fight the brave essayed:
So deadly swept as on he rushed
His ponderous battle-axe's blade;
Each chief who his encounter stayed
Just met him, and with right arm crushed
Disabled from the contest slunk;
Or down at once scarce groaning sunk
With cloven skull and quivering trunk.
—The ‘Angry Star,’ for all his boast,
Not yet the veteran's path had crossed,
But, as it seemed, preferred to close
With less renowned, less dangerous foes;
Or had a craftier game to play
More sure than such a doubtful fray.
So still resistless through the fight
Old Tangi raged; still rose on high
O'er all the noise that battle-cry,
“Now forward to the realms of Night!”—
Yet still for numbers beaten back
Fresh numbers pressed the fierce attack;
The platform mounted—haply dared
To charge the very gates across
The bridges left upon the fosse
By Tangi, for retreat prepared.
But vain their toil—their fury vain;
No hold, no entrance could they gain—
Resisted all—repulsed or slain.

VII.

VIII.

While thus engaged, it chanced the youth
Full upon Whetu-riri came;
And with a moment's shock in truth
That back his blood's quick current sent,
Found his revolver's barrels spent!
Himself in fact unarmed before
The Chief who down upon him bore,
But paused until he joyful saw
The pistol never raised to fire;
Then out his tongue was thrust—his jaw
Aside—his eyes turned back—his face
Distorted with the grim grimace,
His sign of hate, defiance, ire;
High whirled his axe for one sure blow
To lay his helpless victim low.
But Ranolf rallying swift as light
Or lightning, leaping forward, dashed
(Before the axe could downward sweep)
His clenched right hand with all his might
And the momentum of his leap,
Full into that grimacing grin;
And made the astonished savage spin—
While fast his rolling eyeballs flashed
With other gleams than fury lent—
Clean o'er the ditch's sheer descent
Amid the smouldering stakes that crashed
Beneath him as he headlong went,
Wondering what demon could assist
The weight of that hard English fist.—
“Kapai! ka nui pai!—Well done!
O right well done!” a hoarse voice cried—
Old Tangi's—at his topmost run
As rushing round the palisade
That brief encounter he espied
And hastened to the young man's aid.

IX.

—A grisly sight in sooth was he
That huge exulting Chief to see,
As there with lowered axe he stood
And Whetu's smashing fall surveyed!
From his broad axe-blade dripped and drained
The blood; and all with hostile blood
His hoary hair and beard were stained;
With drops of fierce exertion rained
His brow; his chest—so rugged, vast,
And muscle-woven like the twist
Of cable-cords some olive rears,
Some mighty trunk eight hundred years
Have seen in rocky strength resist
Their rending frost and raging heat;—
Like some great engine working fast,
That knotty chest quick-heaving beat:
So stood the Giant in his glee
In friendly hideous ecstasy!
But scarce could toil or triumph check
His course an instant; on he went
(As Ranolf leaving clear his road
Back to the barrier stepped to load)
On towards his prostrate breathless prey,—
That fallen ‘Star,’—with fell intent
To dash his life out where he lay.
But ere he reached him, to his feet
Up sprung Te Whetu, bold, erect—
Though still his blue-lined face streamed red
With that well-planted blow's effect;
At first prepared his foe to meet;
But seemed an instant to reflect;
The tough encounter seemed to dread:
Then shouting bade his men retreat,
And o'er the flat deliberate fled.
Swift passed the word from man to man,
And swiftly leaping down they ran
On all sides from the leaguered fort.
Three steps to follow, Tangi took,
With glad but half-astonished look;
And then in full career stopped short;
Smiled sternly with disdainful lip;
And pulling with his finger-tip
His under eyelid down in scorn—
“Is this your mutton-fish! Am I
Your greenhorn!” was his haughty cry;
For all the plan was patent then,—
To draw him to the open plain,
Where his slight force though stanch and good,
No chance against their numbers stood.
So, with the crowd though onward borne
A moment, back he forced his men;
Bade them for very shame restrain
Their shouts of ‘Victory,’ yet to gain;
And soon had all except the slain
Safe in the fort, to counsel there
How best they might the wall repair—
How best to meet—forestall—defeat,
The next assault their foes might dare.

Canto the Fourth. Fight between ‘Sounding Sea’ and ‘Angry Star.’

I.

Short breathing time the ‘Angry Star’
Gave Tangi, nor retreated far.
Soon as he saw his feint to draw
The veteran from his Fort had failed,
Again he marshalled all his band
Upon the flat beside the shore.
Then with a new device though planned
Before, with hearts and hopes new-fanned
And by the cunning Priest beguiled
With omens sure and safe, once more
The stubborn stronghold they assailed.
With songs and yells and gestures wild
In swarms across the ditch they swept;
In swarms the broken barrier leapt;
Once more by casual shots annoyed
Around the platform swift deployed.
Again—scarce waiting their attack—
The fiery Chief, whom neither age
Nor odds nor toil made slow or slack,
Had sallied forth to force them back,
Or hand-to-hand at least engage
The first who scaled that fighting-stage.
So all the terrace circling round
The ramparts, as before, was crowned
With thronging men in deadly broil
O'erthrown—o'erthrowing; a dark coil
Convulsive, fluctuating, dense,
Of agonizing forms confused,
In every violent posture used
In mad attack or tough defence!
A mass of spears and clubs that crossed
And clashed, and limbs that twined and tossed,
As leathery links of seaweed lithe
At ebbing tide on rock-reefs writhe:
And all the forms and limbs exact
In statuesque proportions cast—
Dark symmetry of strength compact,
Where working muscles rose and fell
With shifting undulations fast
As poppling wavelets when the breeze
The tiderip grates in narrow seas!
Till all that ring of wrestlings rife,
Continuous knots of naked strife,
Had seemed, to looker-on at ease,
Some crowded Phigaleian frieze
Or Parthenaic miracle
Of Art awaked to sudden life—
Or worked in terra-cotta, say,
Brown Lapithæ in deadly fray;
Large-limbed Theseian heroes old,
But darkly dyed, of kindred race,
Whose naked forms of classic mould
In one wide-raging death-embrace
Their naked struggling foes enfold.

II.

III.

But Amo, first among the crowd,
With cheery accents, low not loud,
As if at once their hearts to warm
To effort, yet repress alarm—
With smiles upon her face—howe'er
Her heart might throb with secret care—
Seemed ever everywhere at hand,
To guide, encourage, cheer, command!
And once when fire broke out indeed
And none just then appeared to heed,
Nor quick enough the water came—
Up to the roof she leapt, she sprung,
And o'er the thatch her mantle flung,
And trampled out the mounting flame.—
With arms and that firm bosom bare,
In skirt of glossy flax, as there
Aloft in such excited mood
Hurrying her hastening handmaids, stood
The dauntless Girl—she looked as rare
For spirit, grace, commanding mien,
As loveliest Amazonian Queen
In those surpassing friezes seen!

IV.

V.

VI.

Meantime among the host that fled
And few that followed, quickly spread
The rumour Tangi too was dead;
And of the fugitives ahead
The foremost and least scared began
To make their comrades as they ran
Note their pursuers—far and few—
Their own o'erwhelming numbers too.
They pause—they turn; collect in knots
About the ruined garden-plots;
Not unobserved of him, in place
Of Tangi now who led the chase,
A wary warrior ‘Máwai’ named;—
‘Máwai—the Gourd’—because far-famed
For many a crafty deep design
By sap and trench and secret mine
For creeping into forts—unstayed
By tallest post and palisade;
As sure, though unperceived and slow,
As over fences high or low
That creeping climbing gourd will grow;—
Máwai amid the shrubs and trees
The foe in clusters rallying sees:
So shouts the danger out to all
His headlong comrades within call;
Rates—reasons—threats—entreats and makes
All whom his step or voice o'ertakes
Keep more together—rest content
Just now at least with what was done,
The vengeance taken—victory won.
And thus, with caution, by degrees,
And often turning as they went
As if to ferret out and slay
Chance fugitives that hiding lay—
So that a front they still present
To that recovering enemy
In crowds tumultuous hovering nigh,
And make him doubt their true intent,—
The scanty band of victors back
To their intrenchments take their way;
Their Fort unconquered still, though black
And reeking from the late attack.

Canto the Fifth. Love fed by War.

I.

But ere with Tangi Ranolf reached
The Fort, the anxious Amo came—
With more than one deep-wrinkled dame
Of reputation unimpeached
For skill medicinal—supplied
With best resources from their store
Kept ready and prepared before—
Lint, splints and bands and simples dried—
Came hasting to her Father's side.
Soon as his dangerous state appears,
She dashes off the starting tears;
And sets to work the whimpering crones,
And checks their loud untimely moans.
Thus schooled, with old experienced eye
And gentle hand, the nurses pry
Into the wound, and probe, and try
With styptic herbs well understood
To check and stanch the oozing blood;
With many a mild restorative
And crooning incantation, strive
His pausing pulses to revive;
And back the flitting life allure
With all they know to charm and cure!
With anodynes they soothe his pains;
And many a cooling drink restrains
The fever in his feeble veins.
By Amo's self, sad loving Child,
The thick elastic mats are piled
Whereon the helpless Chief they lay;
By Amo's hands are softly spread
The silkiest, for that poor grand head!
Her tender hands alone essay
To wash the battle-stains away;
And smooth and comb with fondest care,
His snowy beard and matted hair:
While from her heart to those still skies,
Sincere and fervent yearnings rise
For aid, where'er it lives or lies,
With any pitying deities!—
For she to Ranolf's Gods will pray—
Her father's—any Gods that may
Save that dear life, that pain allay!
And must not heartfelt wishes pure,
Deep-breathings of a daughter's love,
Be grateful to the Powers above,
And of benignant hearing sure,
As any prayers howe'er exprest,
And to whate'er enlightened, best
Ideal of Infinite God addrest?—

II.

And Ranolf, wondering, watched her glide—
Mid all that carnage sanguine-dyed,
And brutal savage homicide,
And murderous passions raging wide—
A Seraph of bright tenderness,
A healing Angel, in distress
Sent down to soothe—console and bless!
And felt, to see her there and thus,—
“How sad and beautiful a thing,
How sordid, sad, and glorious,
This human Nature is! where spring
Out of each other, linked by fate,
Such heavenly love, such hellish hate;
What bred this vermin Hate?—Love's rose!
Now, Love in Hate's vile hotbed blows!—
If Evil root itself in Good,
And Good must be evolved from Ill,
Must not the Author of the Good
Be Author of the Evil still?
And we, to work his ends, must we
For love of Good, the Evil flee,
That without which it could not be?—
Aye truly! if to be the seed
Of Good, is Evil's end decreed,
Enough, be sure, will still remain
To raise the plant, howe'er we strain
The seed's destruction to attain.
Say, by the great Soul-Shaper's plan
(Not quite a maze, not wholly dim)
'Tis Evil, tried and conquered, can
Alone exalt ascending Man;—
That just to win his way therein
Unsoiled, unquelled, is asked of him;
The very power, from this life freed,
In loftier life he most may need!
Then Evil's gauntlet he must run—
Be plunged o'erhead in it, as one
In water who would learn to swim;
And stumbling often—oft o'erthrown
Must risk it, as the Child ungrown
Must risk the fall to go alone;
Held ever by its Mother's hand,
How should it learn to walk or stand?
‘'Twere better it were born complete,
Set up at once on steady feet,’
Say you—‘could walk, swim, run at first—
No need to have those weak limbs nurst!’
Nay, then the holiest ties that bless
Our Nature you remove, repress—
The Infant's love and soft caress,
The Mother's depth of tenderness.

III.

So haply through all Being's round
To this condition Good is bound,
Evil in this alliance found;
That each must to the other lead,
And from the other each proceed.
And are they then each other's dower,
Two opposite forces of one Power,
Indifferent, central? must we give
Credence to that about the poles
The positive and negative?
Think that the still-contending twain
(Magnetic double-acting vein)
Ever towards equilibrium strain;
Each when it finds a yielded space,
Pressing to take the other's place?
While to their union would we mount
The ever mystic marvellous Fount
Of Good and Evil, where they live
In unimagined Essence bright
Of Perfect, Necessary, Right,
We come but to the Soul of Souls
Unknowable, for aye unknown
The Centre—God? whence issuing, still
Is issuing into Good and Ill?—
Who knows? but one thing might be shown:
Some Evil there must be where'er
Is Imperfection, foul or fair:
Perfection by a hairbreadth missed
Is Imperfection; you must say
The One Allperfect every way
Is God alone—what else but He?—
It follows—Evil must exist
Or God's the sole Existence be.

IV.

But say the Imperfect might be made
Complete within its bounds—its grade—
From every possible degree
Of Evil done or suffered free—
(Which none can prove)—with no desire
As no conception of the higher:
Would that a loftier lot have been?
To rest, a faultless mere machine
Bound down to automatic bliss
Of stagnant Being—that, or this
Which works through Darkness to the Light,
Still struggling towards the highest height
Perhaps in progress infinite?—
Pooh—pooh!” within himself he said
Breaking the speculative thread
Short off;—for that tumultuous fight,
His own exertions—and the sight
Of Amo by her father's bed
Working in strong affection's might
To soothe and cheer his evil plight—
Most keenly made him feel how vain,
How sickly all the sceptic train
Of thoughts on God, Man's doom or chance,
And Nature's mystic governance:
How true is Goethe's word—‘the cure
For Doubt is Action;’ not indeed
As making speculation sure—
As solving any special doubt,
Or settling any special creed,
But making Doubt itself appear
A thing impertinent and out
Of place in this bright work-day sphere;
And all that Speculation seem
The maundering of a feverish dream;
An idle growth, deficient both
In fragrant flower and wholesome fruit;
Like some white straggling ivy-sprout,
Or sickly honeysuckle-shoot,
That thrusts a pale and feeble trail
Inside a darksome building's wall;
But kept without, in light and heat,
Had spread a green and graceful pall
With feathery blossoms luscious-sweet
O'er many a dreary blank or stain
And blotch that else the eye would pain—
Nor should have been allowed to crawl
Into the inner dark at all.

V.

Canto the Sixth. An old wrong avenged.

I.

That eve a thought struck Ranolf, as he stood
Watching the foe retreat in sullen mood—
Brown barebacked bending crowds, and each canoe
Its ruddy sides white-spotted with a row
Of tufted feathers, paddling, silent, slow,
With wake wide-rippling, o'er the Lake—light-blue
As silver-shining skin of fish new-caught—
Towards hills, of burnished copper cauldron's hue
With the departing sunset; landing then,
How, like dispirited, distracted men,
In huddling knots they flocked and flitted—used
Gesticulations, violent, confused,
Conflicting, undetermined; while alone
The Priest to his secluded cot had gone,
How meditative, silent!—then a thought
Struck Ranolf, of a deed that might be done
Would yield rich harvest with the morning sun.
Oft through the pocket spy-glass thrown ashore
When he was wrecked and which just now he wore,
He from the island had observed before
How Kangapo from motives quickly guessed
Had made his temporary place of rest
Apart from all the crowd and tumult; screened
By the low spur of hill that intervened
From that familiarity which breeds
Contempt—(for hollow-glittering men and deeds!)
And knowing well their superstitious fear
From friends or foes would keep him safe and clear.
Thus by the waterside alone he dwelt,
Nor any fear of their annoyance felt.

II.

'Twas dead of night; the stars with clouds were blurred:
Within the fort the wearied warriors lay
And slept or still discussed the deadly fray.
As noiselessly as Sunbeams on the plain
That shine and shift and fade and shine again,
Bright Amo tended Tangi's fevered pain.
Solemn and deep—distinct in every word,
The intermittent watch-song might be heard
O'er the monotonous, moaning, plaintive strain
Of women wailing for their kinsmen slain,
In groups, with heads down-bent upon their knees—
A musical low tremulous hum like bees—
Or swelling high like far-off murmuring seas;
But o'er it rose the watch-song clear and plain:
For even the sentinels as round and round
With frequent pause they paced the higher ground,
Had many a chaunt and metaphoric snatch
Of verse, to while the tedium of their watch;
(Say ye, the wise, O worthy of all praise,
Who toil, with tokens from forgotten days
The veil from that grand mystery to raise
The origin of Man and all his ways—
Say through what inborn need, what instinct strong,
These savage races are such slaves to Song!)
But these, the watchers round Mokoia's fort
Were sounding through the gloom, in phrases short
By snatches given, a song against surprise,—
Half chaunt—half shouts, deep melancholy cries
Whose purport feebler paraphrase alone
Can give—the sense that to themselves it gave;
For the simplicity of that rude stave
Was so severe, its literal words made known
Were almost gibberish in their brevity:
Only dilution can lend any zest
Or nutriment a stranger could digest
To song in short-hand, verse so cramped—comprest,
The very pemmican of poetry:

III.

IV.

So rolled the solemn Song the darkness through,
As Ranolf with two lads—his trustiest two,
Whose faith was greatest in himself, he knew;
From all the rest dissembling his design
Nor letting even these two its end divine,
Stole from the fort and launched a light canoe;
Then softly paddled o'er the Lake until
They dimly could discern the looming hill
Where Kangapo resided; there they paused
Intently listening—paddled on once more—
(A low wind sighing scarce a ripple caused)
Then cautiously approached the darksome shore,
Some distance from the glen; the keelless prore
Slid smoothly up the pumice-sandy marge:
Then out stepped Ranolf, giving strictest charge
The two should wait there till his quick return,
When they the object of their voyage should learn.

V.

So Ranolf stepped upon the strand;
His foot scarce craunched the gritty sand;
A flax-rope wound his waist around—
Revolver ready in his hand.
With eye and ear alert and keen
For dimmest sight or faintest sound,
In that lone, dark and silent scene
His stealthy way he quickly found:
That way he oft before had been;
That cottage lone had been his own;
Each woody rolling spur and dell
And wavy cliff to which they fell,
Cut off below,—he knew full well.
With noiseless pace he neared the place—
Stood listening hid by shrubs thick-grown.
No sign of life he saw or heard
But distant murmurs; nothing stirred.
On tiptoe to the hut he went;
Close to the wall his ear he leant,
And while his own light breathing ceased
Could hear the breathing of the Priest;
Could hear his sighs—his mutterings low
And restless shiftings to and fro.—
“Awake—then; and too dark 'twould be
Inside for me my work to see!”
Thought Ranolf—“how to bring him out?
The foe so near, their noise I hear;
He must be left no time to shout.”
A rustling noise along the thatch
Like stealthy rats that creep and scratch,
He made—“his ear 'twill surely catch!
With sounds like these along the wall
The Atuas come at priestly call.”—
Small notice seemed the Priest to take:—
The muttering voice a moment dropped;
The train of sad reflections stopped;
He listened—then the gloomy train
Of muttered thoughts began again;
More certain sign the Gods must make
Their votary's dull regard to wake!
His pistol stuck in that rope-belt,—
Then Ranolf lifted up with care
A heavy cooking-stone he felt
About his feet—left always there—
And pitched it full upon the roof;
The stealthy rustling noise renewed;
His pistol drew, and ready stood:
“Against a summons so divine,
Of present Gods so sure a sign,
His priestly ear will ne'er be proof!—”
—Bewildered—wondering—all subdued
By strange and superstitious fright,
Out rushed the Priest into the night—
Rushed into Ranolf's gripe that clutched
About his throat his mat so tight
While his scared brow the pistol touched—
Of Ranolf's threat was little need:
“Hist, wretch! the pistol's at your head—
The slightest noise—and you are dead!”
He could not speak, scarce breathe indeed,
Till from that rivet somewhat freed.

VI.

Thus grappled, to the beach below,
Till out of hearing of the foe,
Ranolf his cowering captive led;
Then on a sudden, turning round,
Tripped up and threw him on the ground;
While the poor Sorcerer, sore dismayed,
Believing his last moment come,
For life, for mercy, whimpering prayed.
Nought answered Ranolf; stern and dumb,
His knee upon his chest he placed;
Unwound the cord about his waist;
And quick the Sorcerer's mantle rolled,
Leaving enough for breathing loose,
About his head and frightened face:
Then, from his sea-experience old,
Expert at every tie and noose,
In briefest space contrived to lace
And truss his victim up from nape
Of neck to sole of foot compact;
Till chance was none of his escape.
“There, friend! for that kind trick you played
Me once, I think you're well repaid.”—
Then to the hut again he tracked
His hasty steps; against the door
A sketch-book-leaf prepared before
He stuck, with this inscription fit,
In letters large in Maori writ:
“Kua kawakína—e—te Tóhunga;
Kia túpato apópo, mo te há—te há!”
“Your sorcerer from your side is torn;
Beware, beware to-morrow morn!”
Beneath was sketched for signature
The dreaded pistol—token sure
To all the foe, if none could read,
Whence came the message—whose the deed.
Then back to where his helpless prey
With muffled moanings writhing lay,
Just like a chrysalis that works
Its head and tail with useless jerks
Cramped by the sheath wherein it lurks—
He sped; hailed softly through the dark
The lads expectant with their bark;
And helped by these, who little knew
Their gruesome captive, packed him safe,
Nor daring now to moan or chafe,
Beneath the thwarts of the canoe;
And to the isle, all danger past,
In triumph soon was paddling fast.

VIII.

Much trouble it cost Ranolf when 'twas known
What captive thus into their hands was thrown,
To save his forfeit life; for Tangi's ire
Against the scheming traitor burnt like fire.
But generous still, and holding hardly worth
His vengeance, one who never from his birth
Had been a warrior, he at last gave way,
Much wondering at the stranger's strange desire
To save the victim he had power to slay.
So, hiding all his hatred, much increased
By Ranolf's kindly act, the dangerous Priest,
Scarce seeming sullen, spiteful or morose,
Was for the present kept a prisoner close.

Canto the Seventh. Death of the ‘Sounding Sea.’

I.

II.

—Thus, all his Soul, in gesture, word and thought,
One blaze of high defiance of the power
Of Death to quell or quench it—thus he fought
The grisly Tyrant to his latest hour;
As Tongariro's fires flare upward red
And fierce, against the blackest clouds that shed
Their stormy torrents on his shrouded head!—
The Priest, in place of Kangapo supplied,
Sung ceaseless incantations at his side;
On him or them but little he relied.
And when the inevitable talons fast
Clutched his old heathen hero-heart at last;
When life's large flame slow-flickering fell and rose,
Death's shadows flapping closer and more close,
Still his unconquered Spirit strove to wave
Its fluttering standard of defiance high;
And “Kia tóa—kia tóa! O be brave,
Be brave, my Sons!”—he gasped with broken cry!
Then as the rattling throat and back-turned eye
Told his last moment come, the restless Priest,
With zeal to frenzy at the sight increased,
Seizing his shoulders, shook him to set free
His Spirit in its parting agony;
And bending o'er that dying head down-bowed,
Into its heedless ear kept shouting loud:
“Now, now, be one with the wide Light, the Sun!
With Night and Darkness, O be one, be one!”—

III.

Then rushed the men about with furious yells;
Then clubs were brandished—every musket fired;
The women shrilled, and as stern use required
Their bosoms gashed with sharpened flints and shells;
Dogs barked and howled, the more the warriors leapt;
The Priest, like one mad-raving or inspired,
Still shouting his viaticum untired!
So while both men and women, old and young
Seemed by some demon to distraction stung—
Though Amo, better taught by Ranolf, kept
More self-command and only moaned and wept,—
So while this stormy hubbub round him swept,
The mighty Chief—the ‘Sounding Sea,’ expired.

IV.

V.

Nor haply should his “trust in God” be scorned,
Because, not naming Him whom none can name,
It was but Confidence, upheld the same,
By praises, prayers, professions unadorned,
In what was Right, his Duty, so he felt;
Because in that unconsciousness he dwelt
Much more upon the Duty to be done
To win it, than the guerdon to be won;
So did the Duty; cared for nought beside;
And let his Gods for all the rest provide.

VI.

Two days in state the Chieftain's body lay,
In arms, mats, feathers, all his best array;
And women wailed and musket-volleys rung
And funeral dirges were in chorus sung,
Which likened him to things below—above—
Best worth their admiration, pride and love;
Most precious trinkets of the greenstone jade—
Canoe-prows carved with most elaborate blade,
And trees of stateliest height—most sheltering shade;—
Bade fiery mountains open to admit
Their hero to the Reinga's gloomy pit;—
Made breezes sigh and boiling geysers groan
In cavernous depths for their great Warrior gone;
Bade Tu, the God of War, look favouring down;
And all the mighty Shades of old renown
Welcome a Spirit who among them came
Proud as themselves, and of congenial fame!
Then to some secret cave and catacomb,
Of all their nobly born the ancient tomb,
In long procession slow, with chaplets crowned
Of fresh-plucked leaves, their dirge-timed way they wound:
There left the dead Form couched in lonely state,
The annual-rounding Sun's return to wait;
Then to be taken out with reverent care,
And the dry bones, corruption-clogged—laid bare—
With songs and savage rites and dances wild,
Cleansed from all fleshly fragments of decay;
And 'mid white skulls and skeletons up-piled,
In that most dreaded Sanctuary laid away.

BOOK THE SEVENTH. SELF-SACRIFICE.

Canto the First. Weariness.

I.

II.

Was she not happy then?—what shadow stole
Over her full contentedness of soul?—
It was that as the days less swiftly flew
A weariness o'er Ranolf's spirit grew;
Not of her charms or her—for none the less
He loved his Wonder of the Wilderness.
But that the Life he led of savage ease
The more it was prolonged, seemed less to please.
Perhaps his love of roving was too strong,
Too deep-engrained to be quiescent long:
But this was not a conscious need, nor would
Have been the parent of his present mood.
It was the crave for intellectual food,
For which a young enthusiast Thinker pines,
Who daringly has tasted of the Tree
Forbidden still, of Knowledge of a Good
Beyond the actual still to be pursued
In all things to all ends; an Evil still
To be assailed by Reason still more free,
By wider Love and more exalted Will.
It was the crave for Books—the mighty mines
Where all the extinguished forests of mankind
In diamond-thoughts lie crystallized—enshrined:
And 'twas the haply sadder doom to be
Excluded from the guidance—sympathy—
The fellowship or presence of the prime
Of men who towards the Light the highest climb;
And head the onslaught of the human Mind
Against the strongholds of dim Destiny.
Ambition—progress—all the hope and pride
Of true Existence seemed to him denied.
That land so rich in Beauty's sensuous smile
Seemed for the Soul, only a desert Isle.
If ever chance-sent rumours reached his ear
Of the great Nations in their grand career,
They seemed dim records of aerial hosts
Who struggled in the heavens—or shadowy ghosts.
All the loud wonder-throes of peace or war
Seemed melted to a murmur faint and far!
What marvel if a feeling would intrude
Of something wanting in this solitude?—
Was it a treason to almighty Love
This sense of unfulfilled desire to prove?
Could any Love in any Paradise
Howe'er impassioned, mutual, melting, true—
Alone for any lovers long suffice?—
Not poets' dreams can make it ever new—
Not even a bridling dove can always coo!

III.

IV.

And Ranolf would her loving purpose guess;
And chide himself that he could not repress
The weary longing that would o'er him steal;
And force a gaiety he could not feel;
And show her deeper love and double tenderness.
But how should this content her? whose sole aim
Was to light up the old gladness in his eyes;
And little cared what of herself became,
Were that secured at any sacrifice;
But gained from true love far too keen a glance
To be deceived by any simulance
Of feeling, or affectionate pretence;—
Is not true Love the Mesmerizer true—
Beyond material Nature and above;
Clear-seeing, with its supernatural sense
The sympathetic object through and through?
Into its inmost being swift to dart,
In strange emotion take magnetic part,
And throb with beatings of the loved one's heart?
So Ranolf fondly sought—but sought in vain
From those fond eyes to hide his inward pain.

V.

Canto the Second. A sad Resolve.

I.

II.

So matters stood. And now the Autumn's fruits—
Karaka—tarro—kumera—berries, roots—
Had all been harvested with merry lays
And rites of solemn gladness; choral praise
And pure religious feeling—grateful—true;
Though rude, benighted if you will, the due
Of the great bounteous Spirit unknown or known
Of Nature; due in every clime or zone;
They called it ‘Rongo’—God of fruits and peace;
What matter, so the gratitude was given
To Spirit—call it Nature, God or Heaven?—
The worst was, almost ere the songs could cease,
With idiot inconsistency, like—men,
The very life-preserving gifts that then
They thanked their God for, they would straight employ
As means, almost incentives, to destroy;
And seize the occasion of abundant food
As fittest for the work of war and blood.

III.

'Twas then, that tidings of invasion planned
By far more dangerous foes against their land,
Reached Rotorua's people; how in brief
That mighty tribe, of all the tribes the chief,
Far in the North, whom not their neighbours dread
Not even the great Waikato could withstand—
Such wealth of guns and powder could they boast,
(For with the white man's ships they trafficked most)
Were coming, an innumerable host
'Twas rumoured, by the famous Chieftain led
With whom the marriage treaty was begun
Which Amo when she swam the Lake had fled;
So much the picture of her beauty brought
By Kangapo had on his fancy wrought;
Such power had recently that rabid Priest—
(By careless Ranolf in contempt released
When after Tangi's death the warfare ceased)—
O'er the excited haughty Chieftain won;
And, mad with rancour and revengeful spite
He could not wreak on Ranolf, nor requite
That spurner of his supernatural might
Who laughed at necromantic spells and charms,
Except by tearing Amo from his arms—
Had roused the Chief's too ready sense of slight,
By representing Tangi in the light
Of an abettor of his daughter's flight;
And acquiescent in the wrong his pride
Endured from those who sought—then set aside—
The great alliance they would now deride.
So all this storm was brewing, it was plain,
And soon would ruin and destruction rain
Upon their tribe, one special end to gain,—
To force surrender of the proffered bride,
And vengeance on the Stranger so obtain.

IV.

V.

VI.

Canto the Third. Death of the Magician.

I.

II.

Dim skies and heavy rain!—
And by Mahana's Lake she roams again;
Nursing her agony with insensate care,
And pampering her despair:
Has sought out every scene
Where she and Ranolf had together been:
On every sight
Of wonder once and such delight
Again has dwelt:
And in their presence felt—
Delight? Ah no! increased distress—
No wonder—worse than weariness.
The clouds were dark and low;
Rain falling, soft and slow;
Day closing on her woe;
As, little heeding where she went,
With trouble more than travel spent,
She wandered reckless near the weird ravine
That leads up to the Lake of waters green,
Through spectral shapes forlorn
Of rocks all torn and weather-worn;
More gaunt, distorted, grim,
Thus shadowy seen through vapours dim.
Then at the entrance of that dismal vale,
Where dense broom-thickets smothering screen
Mud-pools that boil on every side,
And pit the crust, that anywhere might fail
The footstep, with foul cauldrons deep and wide;—
There, she—with hands upon her knees that hid
Her face, unmoving sat.
And though the rain had soaked her flaxen mat,
And slowly down the silken tresses slid,
That fell neglected on the ground;
Though in the silence as they slipped,
The unkindly drops of dew
Audibly dripped and dripped—
She felt it not, nor knew.
The only sight or sound
She saw or heard around,
Was that lost voice, that vanished face
That once had glorified the place;
And now, in such a torturing maze
Of tender recollections, wound
Her burning brain, her breaking heart;
The past to life appeared to start
In vivid hues too beautiful to bear!
Her vanished Bliss seemed over her to glare—
A deadly-terrible Angel lovely-bright
With outspread wings ablaze
Above her hung;—till blasted by its light
Down—down—she cowered—she sank—in misery's blackest night.

III.

How the gleam iridescent and shapeless—that lies
Like the Wreck of a Rainbow flung crushed on the skies
With its hues dimly blurred—where low down there flies
The last rack of the tempest; to mariners drear
How forlornly it calls up the memory clear
Of the Arch all resplendent! the luminous Bow
In the glory of orange and purple aglow,
On the thick of the violet shadow behind
In rounded perfection so sharply defined!
When so airily tender—transparently mild,
Yet so firmly enthroned o'er the elements wild;
So softly aspiring and gracefully grand,
On the air, like a rock, it has taken its stand,
And lords it serenely o'er ocean and land!—
Even so—as she lay overwhelmed by despair
Wan, weary and haggard—crushed, cowering there,
Even so—and so sadly! her woe-begone mien
Might have roused the remembrance of what she had been
When the Maid in the maddening days that had flown
In the bloom and the pride of her happiness shone!

IV.

V.

VI.

Again her journey she pursues.
Her thoughts come back to their accustomed train:
“Only to save him—only make him know,
Although her joy—her life—her love she lose—
No other Maid could love him so!”—
Still fell the sad, slow, melancholy rain;
And though the white mist hid sky, mountain, plain,
Yet somehow seemed it, on her weary brain
The sunshine of that awful morn
When Ranolf last she saw and left—
Still lay—a solemn sombre light forlorn;—
Ever she seemed to wander woebegone
Through endless mazes of a forest lone
All stripped and bare, of every leaf bereft;
While far above her, through the treetops high
That, leafless, yet shut out the sky,
A loud monotonous wind for ever roared,
And those strange, dreary, sombre sunbeams poured;
While in the foreground only could be seen
The lover and the love-joy that had been!
And every actual outward sight and sound,
Men, women, places, voices all around,
Came faintly breaking through this muffling screen,
This sad bright curtain that would intervene;
And only for a moment, face or speech
Importunate of others, could emerge
Through that drear desolate light and murmur loud
As through an ever-circling shroud—
And her preoccupied perception reach
And on her absent mind their presence urge.

VII.

Canto the Fourth. Where is Comfort?

I.

And that informant told them how they found,
Cast on the gravel by the riverside,
The body of the Maiden drowned.

II.

Alas, for Ranolf! in his passionate pain
That image ever was before his brain
In terrible distinctness night and day!
With pertinacious torture self-applied
How would he conjure up to his despair,
And paint with accurate anguish-seeking care
Its harrowing details o'er and o'er again!
How, while the river ran its calm career,
From the spent freshet's fury once more clear;
All heartless Nature, bright, alive and gay
With its accustomed, gentle, joyous stir—
How then they found—O say not her!
She could not be the form that lay
So stilly—half above and half beneath
The shallow, bright, transparent stream,
Upon the clean smooth gravel bank
From which it slowly shrank:
Such mournful meek content upon the face
That you could think it for a little space
Lit by some sadly-pleasing dream;
But then so marble-like and motionless—
Persistent in intensest quietness—
Too soon the moulded lineaments you know
Fixed in the dread serenity of death.
One quiet arm the peaceful head below—
While ever in its flow
The eddying current would come up and play
With the long tresses—as to coax away
And lure the floating tangles to and fro;
While others, in the sunshine dried,
The idle breeze at times would lift aside
Gently—then leave at rest,
Where curling they caressed
The cold unheaving breast;
Or revelled in the gloss and gleam of life,
As if in mockery spread
Along the form that lay as still and dead
As any of the logs of driftwood rife,
By the decreasing tide
Left near it as it fled.—
But piteous—O how piteous! there to see
The wavelets in their sunny chase
In that deserted place—
Upon the bank exposed and lone,
With such an inward-happy sound,
Familiarly and carelessly
Gurgling against and rippling round
The sad and sacred human face,
As if it were a stone.

III.

IV.

“Yet what a thought it is, O God! that we
But by the incredible cruelty of Fate
Ordained by Thee,
Are by a strong revulsion forced to flee
To Reason's refuge in her grief,
The astounding beautiful belief
In Death reviving to some glorious state
Which all that cruelty shall compensate!—
Say, that it is so, and must ever be,
By Nature's strong necessity;—
As air plunged deep in water still must rise,
So, plunged in Life, the Soul to the Eternal flies!—
And if it be denied
That Nature—which is Thou!
Does that necessity provide,
Even Doubt must still avow
It should be so provided—must and should—
If Thou art what we must conceive Thee—good!
Or if at last Doubt will remain,
Were it too wild a fancy—to maintain,
(Till clearer light the mystery explain)
Faith has to be created—self-resigning Trust
In Thee—the all-generous and just?
And Trust like that, for aught we know,
Can but in the absence of Assurance grow;
Can but be strengthened to the due degree
By actual plunging in the furnace-glow
And wavering flames of forced Uncertainty:
The Soul can but be fashioned so,
Into the shape of Beauty, and substance clear
Of crystal Confidence sincere—
The form and fineness its high fates require;
As the glass-worker whirls and moulds
Into a graceful vase the glass he holds
Molten in jets intense of fierce white fire.”

V.

VI.

Yet should he long endure
Such pangs and pains, be sure
He must escape them—being left alive;
For the old joyous temper must revive.
The clouds of Anguish o'er the blue would drive
And hide—but not annihilate the Sun:
Grief has a work to do—which must be done.
Though o'er his Soul the waves of Sorrow surge,
That buoyant joyous Nature must emerge
By animal force into a realm more bright;
And that reflective tendency would urge
His Soul—long after—into peaceful light.
And he would first experience—and then know,
How great a purger of the Soul is Woe;
A fine manipulator skilled to drain
The Spirit of the grosser atmosphere
Which can alone give life to and sustain
Prides—lusts—ambitions—passions fierce and vain;
Until the heart is a receiver clear
Exhausted of the elements they need,
And wanting which, they droop and disappear.

VII.

Canto the Fifth. A Vision.

I.

II.

III.

In doubt what course he should pursue,
On sad and gloomy thoughts intent,
With folded arms and head downbent
Against an entrance post he leant.
Not far below, there hung in view
That immemorial red-blue gleam
Of world-embracing Ocean-fame—
The flag that long shall float supreme
(Its double-cross still side by side
With that of ‘Stars and Stripes’ allied)
Let all of English blood and name
Be to each other staunch and true!
Ah, with what sense of proud delight,
So long unseen, a short time back
That flag had flashed upon his sight!
But now it bade his memory track
The train of evils that had come
Out of that longing for his home.
Well might his heart so busied, feed
On bitter anguish; well might bleed
Remembering why he shunned to share
That home with her! He could not bear
Nor blink the truth, the cause, to-day—
Contemptible and coward care
Of what ‘the World’ might think or say—
That blatant—brainless—soulless World!
Ah with what scorn he would have hurled
Such pitiful respect away
Had one more chance been given to prove
How much he prized that priceless love!
O but one chance—giv'n then and there
The ‘World’ and all its slaves to dare!
With measureless defiance brave
Its worthless worst rebukes and save
A heart, so simply grand beside
Its poor conventions, paltry pride,
Refined frivolities—and cant,
The natural course—or worse—the want
Of real emotions, framed to hide!—
Aye! but too late that wisdom came;
The shame too late of that mean shame;
Remorse and withering self-disdain,
Too late and impotent and vain!
There was nought left him but to rave
With voiceless, useless, inward pain.
His trust in higher things was gone—
His ‘Power Divine’—his ‘God of good,’
What faith in Him could he retain!
It seemed to his despairing mood,
Faith could not, should not, live alone
When Hope and happiness had flown!

IV.

On such distressful thoughts intent,
Against that entrance-post he leant.
Forlorn alike to eye and ear
Seemed time and place and atmosphere!
With wearying, bright unchanging glow
The calm, regardless sunbeams shone;
With wearying faintly-changeful flow
The insects' tune went murmuring on.
No sign of living thing beside;
Not even a dog's out-wearied howl;—
Yes—once his listless eye espied
Scarce noting it, a sleepy fowl
Ruffling its feathers in the dust;
Companionless—the moping bird,
Stalking and pecking leisurely
Beneath a cottage wall, went by;
No longer were its mutterings heard.
Yes—once a rat, in open day
Stole forth, and crossed at easy pace
The silent solitary place;
Stopped often, showing no distrust
Nor any haste to slink away.
It too had vanished. Still fast-shut,
In sunshine stood each silent hut:
And dark, distinct, beside it lay
Its shadow still—no cloudlet slow
Passing to make it come or go—
Unfading—seeming changeless too
As if it neither moved nor grew,
That lingering, loitering afternoon.
Then even the murmuring, dreamy tune,
That now would swell and now subside,
Awhile in utter silence died.

V.

VI.

Canto the Sixth. The Departure.

I.

Night came at last; at last ev'n midnight came.
How wearily the hours for Ranolf passed—
On tenterhooks of expectation cast—
Such incomplete and tantalizing joy!
But even the noisy natives sunk at last
To rest—the earlier for their day's employ.
The flittings to and fro, from hut to hut,
Ceased by degrees, and every door was shut;
The laughter loud and lazy chat were o'er;
The smouldering firesticks on each earthen floor
Had for the last time been together raked,
And blown with lips far-pouted, to a flame;
The last pipe smoked; and the consuming thirst
For gossip haply for the moment slaked.
The large-limbed lounging men upon the ground,
Naked whene'er the heat too great was found;
And every active, restless, wrinkled dame,—
Crowded in some convenient house at first,
Had to their separate homes retired to sleep;
And all the ‘pah’ was wrapt in silence deep.

II.

III.

Then soon a plan for their escape
Was moulded into practicable shape:
Only the pressing, first, immediate need
Was that before these natives they should be
Absolute strangers, nor each other heed.
This need did Amo when she first caught sight
Of Ranolf, feel—this, somehow could foresee;
And this perception made her first wild cry,
That sudden cry of wonder and delight
Die off in such a strange unmeaning moan.

IV.

But she had told ere this, the how and why
She had been saved, and now was here alone;
How it was true, by that wild freshet's force
She was whirled down till consciousness was gone;
And soon upon a gravel-bank was thrown.
How a chance Traveller saw the seeming corse;
Apprised these natives; and observed them bear
The breathless body home with sorrowing care,
Home to their huts hard-by; then went his way,
Thinking her dead; that nought required his stay;
And anxious by no loss of time to lose
The importance, well he knew, none would refuse
To the first bearer of such startling news.
But those good Women, in the senseless Form
They carried, saw or felt there yet might lurk
Some faintest spark of life; so set to work
Its embers to re-waken and re-warm;
Made fires; applied hot stones, and rubbed her feet
And hands and heart with toil incessant; poured
Down her unconscious throat for greater heat
Some of the white man's liquid fire; implored
With moaned and murmured incantations meet
The Water-God and Storm-God; till at length
Her feeble fluttering pulse began to beat;
And that suspended current in her veins
To run, and rack her, as it gathered strength,
And prick with tingling tortures, pangs and pains,
Far worse than any she in drowning felt.
So with their patient patiently they dealt,
And charmed and chafed her till to life restored.
But with her life her first resolve returned;
And in her recklessness she let them know
The scheme which to accomplish still she burned,
To yield herself, ere he could strike a blow,
To save her people, to her people's foe.
How she repented soon that she had told
Her secret: for the Chief, of no great name
Or note, and doubtless of as little worth,
Who ruled this petty village, stood,
With that marauding magnate of the North,—
Though some remote connection he could claim,
So she was told, by marriage or by blood—
On terms of doubtful amity; and hence
The crafty schemer was too glad to seize
A lucky accident like this to please
The mightier potentate; so forthwith hatched
A plan—to feign he could not trust her tale;
And hold her captive, on the false pretence
He did so to secure her without fail
For the great Chief, until the last could say
What was his will about her: then despatched
A trusty messenger that will to learn;
And issued strict commands, till his return
Her every movement should be closely watched,
Nor she permitted from the ‘pah’ to stray.
And thus the great man's favour would be won;
Besides that, for such shining service done,
A splendid claim, he reckoned, would arise
For ‘utu’—compensation or reward,
The other could not fail to recognize.
But she, determined not to be debarred
From fully working out her first intent,
To put both Chief and people off their guard,
Affected in this plan to acquiesce;
Resolved whene'er their watchfulness grew less,
As finding 'twas but trouble vainly spent,
She would escape; her lonely road resume;
Self-guided seek her self-inflicted doom;
The merit of her sacrifice retain,
And greater power o'er proud Pomarë gain.
So at the village patiently she stayed;
Till all their first suspicions were allayed;
About her ways it seemed they little cared;
And she had everything for flight prepared:
Nay, would that very night, unseen, unknown,
Upon her errand of despair have flown;
Rushed on the fate she loathed, yet would have braved
Had she not been, by gift of all she craved,
This blest return of his affection, saved.

V

VI.

These moving moveless Mountains and still Main,
Had nearly in their unfelt flight again
Slipped from beneath the funnel of deep shade
For ever shot from our Sun-circling ball,
Through which we peer into Infinity;—
Those four grand worlds tremendous which we call
A Cross—and their immensity invade
With faiths and fancies of our tiny Star,
Seemed to have turned them in their watch on high,
And changed the side from which to gaze afar
On the dark Pole—the seeming vacant Throne
Of One that Warder bright adored alone!
As in blue Syrian midnights long bygone,
Some jewel-armoured Satrap Damascene,
More from the fevered restlessness inspired
By Love, than with his tedious vigil tired,
Might oft have changed the spot where he would lean
And keep his fierce enamoured glances, keen
And glittering as his falchion, rapt and fast
Upon the lattice-screen whereat at last
His maddening matchless quest—some miracle-Queen,
In loveliness and learnedness and loftiness
Of spirit, perfect as that Palmyrene,—
But one ecstatic moment might appear,
Zenobia-like—too dazzlingly severe,—
And frown a sunrise on the love's excess
Its glory could reward but not repress!—
Beneath the myriad eyes of that still Sky
Cowering the conscious Ocean seemed to lie,
With faint soft murmuring, finely-wrinkled swell;
As if it scarcely dared to heave or sigh
Beneath the fascination of their spell;—
In brief, dear tortured Reader—it was near
The dawn; and Sea and Sky were calm and clear.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Then, as some choice and cherished plant, erewhile
A thousand-blossomed wonder and a show—
Camellia or Azalea—one great pile
Of rounded knots of lovely-moulded snow,
Starring the glistening gloom of dark-green leaves
With such luxuriance in simplicity,
A purity so lavish and so free;—
Or one unbroken broad diaphanous flush
Of delicate flow'rets, luminous and lush
As they were fashioned of the finest blush
Of light, the heart's core of soft summer-eves,
The tenderest recess of sunset, weaves;—
As such a Plant—if set in hard-bound soil
Where cutting winds could wither and despoil,
Till cankered leaves and scanty blooms declared
How ill in such environment it fared;
But then again transferred from clay and cold
To some warm nook of mellow-crumbling mould,
Reviving and re-blooming would outburst
In all the glory it could boast at first:—
Even thus did Amo, and in days as few
As this in months, her fairest charms renew;
Thus, rooted in the soil of rich Content
And breathing Love's serenest element,
Recovered fast, elastic and erect—
The sprightliness of form by sorrow checked;
Once more, its supple roundness, sinuous grace,
With slim and slender vigour chastely vied;
Her eyes regained their dancing lights—her face
Its winning frankness—sweet and sunny pride;
Thus did she, brilliant as again a bride,
The shape and hues of happy health resume,
And all her wild magnificence of bloom!

X.

So, with its loving freight, to scenes untold—
As daybreak wrapt her in its rosy fold,
So—down and down, beneath the horizon's brink—
Hull—sails—and masts—did that lone Vessel sink,
And melt into the flood of morning gold.
The Husband-lover and the lover-Wife
Dipped down into the chequered deep of Life!
So vanished—gliding down the blue hill-slope
Of Ocean into an abyss of Hope;
Plunged deep and deeper, every day that flew
In golden gulfs of bright Expectance—new
Experience—all of glad and glowing True
Or glorious Seeming, that can soothe and bless
Youth, Fancy, fondest Love, with dreams of Happiness!

Canto the Seventh. After-Experiences.

I.

Of Ranolf's feelings in the after-day,
His special findings by Life's varied way,
But little further—little fuller—may
This realistic record sing or say.

II.

Then—for the tasks of Life;—whate'er the sphere
Wherein his fleeting forces may be spent
Will he not learn, herein too, Life was lent
But as one stage for our development?—
God's studio is this Earth,
And we, His pupils, for instruction sent,
Are pottering at our work of little worth
But to attain to faculties that here
Reach no perfection, or at least complete
No works that seem for such perfection meet.
How oft does mastery, even the most assured,
Moral or mental, seem in vain secured!
Our poets—artists—heroes—those
Whose ripening powers or ripened could not fail,
Their transient tools and organs lose,
Oft when their Souls seem fittest to prevail—
Most apt for thoughts or deeds sublime!
As if their lives were but a blossoming time;
They students—and the works they leave,
So far beneath what they conceive,
But tyros' crude essays to what in vain
Their fond imaginations long indeed
In this life—but in this life are in train
Only in larger—loftier to achieve;
Essaying here, but elsewhere to succeed;
(Thy favourite faith, my Poet many-souled—
All Intellect alight with Argus-eyes untold!)
Till not alone the buds of beauty left
By Nature's younger darlings soon bereft
Of life and lyre—too soon!—a Shelley made
All spirit—nay—frail spirit-tortured flesh
Self-fevering through false theories, griefs and heats
And phantasms, to pure Spirit; or a Keats,
In senses for a human Soul too fresh
And keen and fine, too dangerously arrayed;
Our young-eyed Cherubim, who like poor bees
Over a citron-blossom lifeless curled,
Not half their honey gathered for the world,
Died at their sweet vocation;—O not these—
Nor the rathe buds of amaranth they seize—
But roses fully blown; the gorgeous train
Of bright humanities a Shakespeare's brain
Bids into being, deathless and intense,
Reflecting God's own Life-crowd—hue for hue
And gleam for gleam—so varied—vivid—true—
The double Rainbow's second Arch, in stripe
And stain scarce dimmer than its archetype!—
Even these, to his great Spirit taken hence,
Seem left but like the drooping coronet
Of threaded anthers hanging still around
Some tiny nectarine-fruit, green, newly-set;
The poor triumphant relic that once crowned
Its flowering-time incipient, immature;
Just dropping from the fruit that must expand
To golden richness in the radiance pure
Of wider Skies and some diviner Land!

III.

And as the Will Supreme intends
Life's highest work as means, not ends:
Its joys and pleasures, coarse—refined—
Alike to be renounced—resigned;
Will he not feel at last, and see
The more for every misery,
The rolling seasons as they flee,
To him too, as to all mankind
Full surely will dispense—decree,—
That Life itself is meant to be
Held loosely—lightly?—as one day
When he with Amohia gay
Roamed in that earliest bliss of love,
He held upon his open palm
A slender beetle silver-bright
Beneath, all pure grass-green above;
And bade her come and look how fair
The dainty creature, 'lighted there
And running to his finger-tip
To gain a vantage-ground to slip
Off into air, its native balm;
“So should we hold this Life” he thought,
“So watch with interest, deep delight,
The flitting thing with beauty fraught,
Long as it lingers in our sight;—
So let it take, nor e'er repine,
When go it must, its mystic flight,
Into the limitless Divine!”

IV.

And he will feel—for such as he,
Of healthy frame and reason free,
Are more than most, secure to feel,
As straight he steers through rocks and shoals,
What haven rests for noble souls!
Yes, he will feel through woe and weal,
The power of Time to soothe and heal;
And tune the Soul to full concent
With its surrounding element.
The wear and tear of right and wrong
Less injure than befriend, the strong;
And cheerful heart and chastened will
Uplift them; and Experience still
Maturing, lends a master's skill,
Life's rich Harmonium-reeds to sound,
Once dumb, or so discordant found;
With easy stop some pain prevent;
With facile touches, lightly thrown,
Give simpler pleasures fuller tone;
And from the ebon-ivory range
Of chequered days and chance and change,
Draw symphonies serene and strange,
Melodious Music of Content.
They gain, like fruits, as ripe they grow,
More sweetness, with a sunnier glow;
Till, mellowing ever, they begin
The faith as very truth to hold—
The best of worlds is that wherein
Is much of Evil, so-called ‘Sin’;
With active wish and earnestness
To make that ‘Sin’ and Evil less.
So by degrees to Fate they mould
The Will that seemed so uncontrolled;
And patience comes—and passions cool;
And where they once were ruled, they rule;
Love's wing grows wider—Thought's more bold
The iron bonds are turned to gold;
The chafing and restraint are past;
And what were chains at first, are ornaments at last.

V.

VI.

But in Life's starry twilight obscure, O be sure such a Wanderer as he
Will the worth of the ‘probable,’ nay, of the ‘possible’ more and more see,
As the limited rays of the gas-lamps of knowledge demonstrative press
With their narrowness more on his soul, evermore to its nobler distress!

VII.

“But to me,” he would muse, “it seems ever more possible, probable too,
That all Faiths and Philosophies, higher and lower, the old as the new
Are but parts of one System sublime,—have Ideas universally true!
Each that seemed an Aldebaran, Sirius once—but a fixed Sun or Star
That must pant in its lordly seclusion, alone, independent, afar,
Was or is—though by handbreadths in ages, approaching or moving around
Some vast undefinable centre, some Truth through them all to abound!
Of one Mystery all revelations, though outlets so varied they try;
Sheet-lightnings that glimmer responsive from opposite points of the Sky!
All but tones of one measureless Music revolving in symphony sweet,
Where the deep rich Eternity's bass must the chimes of Existence complete!

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

“How, but ends of broad rays, all these Faiths, under cloud-skirts too vast to dispel,
Though they slant up at angles opposed, to one centre yet pointing so well,
Of the great hidden Splendour—the Soul's happy destiny—solemnly tell!”—

XII.